16/04/2024 | 18:41:56 Mister President, Europe has traditionally tried to skip drawing parallels between Kosovo and other unrecognised entities that aspire to exercise their right to self-determination, the Republic of Artsakh for example. Such a selective approach to self-determination and its application has become one of the key sources of instability on the continent. Instead of turning into a source of international order and justice, it became a blunt instrument for geopolitical shifts. Both Kosovo and... 15/04/2024 | 16:09:35 Mister Chairman, domestic political situation in Armenia after 2021 parliamentary election fully demonstrated the importance of such a resolution, but is unlikely to stop the erosion of parliamentary democracy. An acceptable political and parliamentary culture is not being formed in Armenia unfortunately, since there is not a single case of changing the current government through elections. In my country, the clear-cut constitutional guarantees and mechanism adopted for ensuring the proper... 15/04/2024 | 13:07:48 (Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2) Mr President, The situation in our region is becoming increasingly unstable and controversial. President Aliyev, supported by Turkey, has perceived the congratulatory messages from the European leadership on his re-election as a European mandate to continue his course against Armenians. At the same time, tens of thousands of Armenians after ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenian prisoners in Baku, do not see the same European... 23/01/2024 | 17:44:36 Madam Chair, Unfortunately, violence has become one of the main mechanisms for implementing the plans of not only terrorist groups and authoritarian states but also democratic governments. As the UN, Council of Europe, OSCE and other international organisations lose their relevance and influence, unacceptable forms of solidarity between authoritarians and democracy appear, which are often based on a union of arms and oil. Such solidarity is limiting the right of many nations to self... 22/01/2024 | 17:39:34 (Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2) Mr President, During the last World Forum for Democracy, in this very hemicycle, a conclusion was made, that democracies tend to experience peace, but transitions to democracy do not guarantee peace. I don’t know if this was a justification for the ongoing wars and ethnic cleansing in Europe, but this logic put the post-Soviet democracies geographically at the center of the confrontation between the Western and Eastern paradigms. As a result... 12/10/2023 | 20:16:08 (Undelivered speech, Rules of Procedure Art. 31.2) Dear colleagues, Let me start by reminding you an important provision from the Reykjavik Declaration: “We consider democracy as the only means to ensure that everyone can live in a peaceful, prosperous and free society. We will meet our obligations under international law”. The fact is that at this very time democracy have failed to help the Armenians of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh. Real life has shown that human rights cannot be... 12/10/2023 | 16:42:45 Dear colleagues, I will reflect on two observations pertaining to the future of the Council of Europe and this Assembly keeping in mind the situation in the post-Soviet space. First, today, the Council of Europe presents our people with a rather dangerous choice to make between a genuine democracy and authoritarianism. Such a strange choice exists due to the fact that our organisation, is loyal to the coexistence of political regimes, like in Türkiye and Azerbaijan, under our common umbrella... 10/10/2023 | 19:24:39 Thank you. Dear colleagues, Over the past decades many member states, including my own, have looked up to France as a source of best practice of good governance, human rights protection and participatory technocratic process. But let me focus on one other issue, namely the human rights dimension in the foreign policy of France. Since the late 1990s, France has been a co-chair in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Minsk Group, which for two decades has tried to find a... 10/10/2023 | 17:14:09 Dear colleagues, This report is presented by a member of the ruling party of a country that just accomplished a complete ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh against the indigenous Armenian population. It is quite strange when a representative of Azerbaijan is presenting a report on the issue of human rights and democratic governance. Far-right ideologies most of the time consist of nationalist, xenophobic, militaristic and authoritarian sentiments. All these have been present in Azerbaijan... 10/10/2023 | 16:03:23 Thank you, Madam Secretary General, Just yesterday, during the same session we awarded the Václav Havel prize to the Turkish political prisoner Osman Kavala, recognising human rights violations in Türkiye and at the same time, we elected a new Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from Türkiye, essentially encouraging its current policy. This is just an observation, but you should know that as a part of its genocidal policy Azerbaijan recently captured the...