The UK House of Commons.
Support for the Swiss Peace Initiative for Nagorno Karabakh is growing in the UK.
On June 18, the Chair and Vice Chair of the UK’s parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Freedom of Religion or Belief (APPG FoRB) issued a statement in support of the Swiss Peace Initiative, an initiative to end the long conflict in Nagorno Karabakh and return its exiled Armenian Christian population to their homes.
A Swiss delegation is currently visiting Washington DC to gain further international support for the initiative. It will hold a briefing on Capitol Hill today, July 8, which will be transmitted live.
In their statement, MP Jim Shannon and David, Lord Alton of Liverpool welcomed the Swiss Peace Initiative as creating the opportunity for “open dialogue between Azerbaijan and the forcibly-displaced Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh” and “the return of the displaced to their homes.”
The APPG for Freedom of Religion or Belief is a cross-party group with 110 members in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, all of whom share an interest in defending religious liberty.
On June 25, the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), a British human rights group founded by Baroness Caroline Cox, organized another statement of support. This statement was signed by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, as well as Fiona Bruce, the former UK Special Envoy for Religious Freedom, Sir Geoffrey Nice, and Lord Singh of Wimbledon.
“Marginalised groups often have the biggest stake in promoting peace and development,” the statement noted. “If deeply-held views remain hidden, or if they are heard but dismissed, then the root causes of conflict cannot be addressed.”
These statements of support provoked an angry response from Azerbaijan. Fariz Ismayilzada, Head of the Azerbaijan–UK Inter-Parliamentary Working Group, sent a “strongly-worded letter” to Shannon and Alton, calling the Swiss Peace Initiative “not only useless, but also harmful,” claiming “there is no administrative unit under this name [Nagorno Karabakh] in Azerbaijan” and that the displaced Armenians “left the region voluntarily under the influence of Armenian propaganda.”
In the space of seven days in September 2023, nearly 120,000 Armenian Christians fled Nagorno Karabakh to escape Azerbaijan’s military takeover. Only about a dozen remain. A report from Freedom House in 2024 found that “the Azerbaijani state acted upon a comprehensive, methodically implemented strategy to empty Nagorno Karabakh of its ethnic Armenian population and historical and cultural presence.”
Unlike the Western-led peace talks between the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Swiss Peace Initiative envisions a peace conference to be held in Switzerland before March 2026, where representatives of the forcibly displaced Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh will have a seat at the table, and the modalities of their return will be negotiated.
The coming months will reveal whether this diplomatic momentum can be maintained to overcome the political obstacles that have thus far prevented a just resolution to one of the world’s most enduring humanitarian crises.
