On 8 August 2025, Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a U.S.-brokered accord in Washington (‘Accord’). The settlement was then heralded as a breakthrough in a decades-long battle. The revealed textual content of the Settlement on Institution of Peace and Inter-State Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan reveals a dedication to mutual recognition of one another’s Soviet-era borders and territorial integrity, a renunciation of any future territorial claims, and a pledge to not use power or help separatism towards one another.
What the Accord doesn’t handle, nonetheless, is the mass displacement of over 100,000 ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023. The Parliamentary Meeting of the Council of Europe described the mass exodus as giving rise to an inexpensive suspicion of ethnic cleaning. The Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ), in its 17 November 2023 Armenia v Azerbaijan order, acknowledged the occasion as plausibly the pressured displacement of Armenians (paras 40-41). The precept ex injuria jus non oritur (legislation doesn’t come up from injustice) supplies a lens to scrutinise this query. Worldwide legislation doesn’t enable an illegal scenario created by a critical breach of elementary norms to be legitimised merely by means of a subsequent settlement. This piece analyses the Accord towards that authorized backdrop, examines the implications of omitting the displaced Armenians’ rights, and whether or not such an settlement can have any lawful impact, particularly below jus cogens, the legislation of treaties, the legislation of state accountability, and related ICJ jurisprudence.
Omissions of Treatment
The Accord omits what, in lots of different peace accords, is an integral part of post-conflict justice. For instance, Annex 7 of the Dayton Peace Accords for Bosnia in 1995 addressed refugee return and property restitution, aiming to reverse the ethnic cleaning of the Bosnian struggle. In sharp distinction, the initialled textual content between Armenia and Azerbaijan incorporates no equal ensures.
It’s on this mild that Article XV of the initialled doc raises profound considerations. The supply obliges the Events to ‘withdraw, dismiss, or in any other case settle any and all interstate claims… in any authorized discussion board’ inside one month of the treaty’s entry into power. This could embody Armenia’s pending case towards Azerbaijan earlier than the ICJ, and Armenia’s inter-state utility earlier than the European Courtroom of Human Rights. These proceedings transcend summary inter-sovereign disputes – they’re rooted within the safety of particular person rights towards racial discrimination, arbitrary detention, and mass displacement. To make certain, States do get pleasure from a excessive diploma of autonomy in resolving conflicts, and peace agreements usually contain painful compromises (together with amnesties or waivers of claims). Nonetheless, worldwide legislation attracts the road at agreements that violate peremptory norms or undermine erga omnes obligations. That is the restrict of celebration autonomy in treaty-making. On this approach, jus cogens ensures that post-conflict settlements don’t cement the very injustice that worldwide legislation universally condemns. A legally compliant peace settlement on this case would require advert minimal: (i) binding provisions for the voluntary, secure, and dignified return of displaced individuals; (ii) unbiased worldwide monitoring of return and restitution processes; (iii) mechanisms for property restoration and/or compensation; and (iv) ensures of non-repetition, probably by means of safety preparations or autonomous governance safeguards. The authorized floor for such measures was already set out by the ICJ’s 17 November 2023 order, which instructed Azerbaijan to make sure unimpeded motion into and out of Nagorno-Karabakh (paras. 40-41, 74).
For the reason that twentieth century, worldwide legislation follow has rejected the concept that a State could profit legally from its wrongdoing. The Stimson Doctrine (non-recognition of Japan’s conquest of Manchuria in 1931) and the post-World Battle II authorized order cemented this precept. The 1970 U.N. Pleasant Relations Declaration explicitly affirmed that ‘no territorial acquisition ensuing from the menace or use of power shall be acknowledged as authorized’.
This precept extends past territory to different critical breaches of worldwide legislation. Acts comparable to genocide, crimes towards humanity, racial discrimination (apartheid), or aggression can’t be rewarded or legitimised by subsequent preparations. This place was expressly reaffirmed within the Worldwide Legislation Fee’s 2022 Conclusions on Peremptory Norms of Normal Worldwide Legislation, which listed these prohibitions as among the many core peremptory norms binding on all states. If a inhabitants is expelled in violation of elementary rights, the expulsion can not grow to be irreversible just because a peace treaty turned a blind eye to it. Because the Latin maxim is usually paired: ex injuria jus non oritur (no authorized proper arises from injustice) is the converse of ex factis jus oritur (legislation arises from details), solely factual conditions not tainted by critical illegality could give rise to authorized rights.
Jus cogens, or peremptory norms of worldwide legislation, are these elementary norms accepted and recognised by the worldwide group from which no derogation is permitted. The Vienna Conference on the Legislation of Treaties (VCLT) codifies the overriding power of jus cogens in treaty legislation. Article 53 VCLT supplies that ‘a treaty is void if, on the time of its conclusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm of basic worldwide legislation’. Article 64 VCLT additional provides that if a brand new peremptory norm emerges, any current treaty that conflicts with that norm turns into void and terminates.
The Accord as such doesn’t contradict Article 53. But Article XV of the Accord, by obliging the withdrawal of instances earlier than worldwide tribunals, it conflicts with the responsibility of non-recognition and the erga omnes obligation to cooperate in bringing critical breaches to an finish. And by foreclosing avenues of redress, it makes an attempt to waive rights which are non-derogable below human rights legislation, together with the best of displaced individuals to return and to acquire efficient treatments. Thus, the Accord imposes procedural bars that stretch into the sphere of substantive rights effectively past its bilateral scope, amounting to a believable breach of jus cogens obligations of an erga omnes character and, in impact, constituting a denial of avenues to justice.
State Duty and the Obligation of Non-Recognition
The Worldwide Legislation Fee’s Articles on Duty of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) devotes Chapter III to ‘Critical Breaches of Obligations below Peremptory Norms’. Article 40 of the ARSIWA defines a ‘critical breach’ as one which entails a gross or systematic failure by the accountable State to meet an obligation arising below a peremptory norm. The ethnic cleaning of a complete folks from their homeland would qualify as a critical breach of a peremptory norm. Article 41 ARSIWA then units out particular penalties of such critical breaches. All States have an obligation to cooperate to convey to an finish the breach by lawful means, and no State shall recognise as lawful a scenario created by a critical breach, nor render help or help in sustaining that scenario. This codifies in constructive legislation the ex injuria precept: the worldwide group should withhold recognition and help from the fruits of egregious illegality.
The responsibility of non-recognition has been affirmed in earlier ICJ jurisprudence. Within the 1971 Namibia Advisory Opinion (Authorized Penalties for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia), the Courtroom held that States had been obligated to disclaim authorized recognition to South Africa’s unlawful occupation of Namibia and to chorus from any acts implying its legality (paras 126, 133). Equally, within the 2004 Wall Advisory Opinion (Authorized Penalties of the Development of a Wall within the Occupied Palestinian Territory), the ICJ concluded that each one States are below an obligation to not recognise the unlawful scenario ensuing from Israel’s development of the wall and related measures, and to not render help or help in sustaining that scenario (paras 159-160). Most lately, within the 2019 Chagos Advisory Opinion (Authorized Penalties of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius), the ICJ reiterated that the continued administration of Chagos by the UK was an illegal scenario ensuing from a critical breach. It suggested that each one UN Member States should cooperate with the United Nations to finish the decolonisation of Mauritius, implicitly requiring States to not recognise or acquiesce within the illegal establishment (paras 176-178). The constant thread in these instances is the responsibility of non-recognition of conditions created by grave breaches. Making use of this to the Washington Accord, we encounter a paradox. If Armenia, by means of the Accord, successfully ‘normalises’ the ethnic cleaning of Armenians, and Azerbaijan’s uncontested management of Nagorno-Karabakh with out its Armenian inhabitants, did Armenia breach the duty of non-recognition? Some would argue that Armenia has an obligation erga omnes to not recognise the scenario created by Azerbaijan’s gross violations. Regardless, third States and worldwide organisations shouldn’t be relieved of their obligation to refuse recognition simply because Armenia and Azerbaijan struck a deal. In sensible phrases, States may refuse to acknowledge the ethnic Armenian inhabitants’s rights as extinguished. They might insist on the best of these folks to return or obtain compensation, however the silence of the bilateral treaty.
Conclusion
The Accord marks a political milestone in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, but its authorized standing is inseparable from the context through which it was reached. By omitting the rights of Nagorno-Karabakh’s displaced Armenians, it dangers not solely leaving a humanitarian disaster unresolved but additionally amounting to implicit recognition of a scenario born of a critical breach of peremptory norms. Political expediency can not create authorized rights from wrongful acts; ex injuria jus non oritur stays a substantive barrier in worldwide legislation. Some could contend that strict adherence to authorized rules stands in the way in which of attaining peace. In actuality, towards all odds, the one viable course is a legalist method, which ought to anchor the peace course of throughout the framework of worldwide legislation. The legitimacy of any post-conflict settlement within the South Caucasus will rely on whether or not it addresses, relatively than erases, the results of internationally wrongful acts. Peace constructed on displacement with out return, restitution, or justice shouldn’t be merely fragile; it’s legally faulty. Finally, now, with its Armenian inhabitants pressured out, Nagorno-Karabakh is certainly at ‘peace’, a peace of kinds, if that counts too.
Davit Khachatryan is a world lawyer, researcher, and lecturer specializing in funding legislation, various dispute decision, and public worldwide legislation. His tutorial {and professional} work focuses on funding and industrial arbitration, the safety of international funding, and the intersection of worldwide funding legislation with rising world challenges comparable to power safety and local weather change.
