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“There is a reasonable basis to believe that a Genocide is being committed against Armenians living in [Artsakh] in 2023... the ongoing Genocide by starvation”
September 6, 2023 testimony by Luis Moreno Ocampo, Former Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court
On September 6, 2023, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission convened a hearing sounding the alarm on the impending catastrophe in Nagorno-Karabakh. The committee heard expert testimony from Professor David L. Philips, Director of Columbia University’s Artsakh Atrocities Project, and Luis Moreno Ocampo, Former Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. Mr. Ocampo testified that “there is a reasonable basis to believe that a Genocide is being committed against Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023,” and spoke of “the ongoing Genocide by starvation.”
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On September 14, 2023 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on Nagorno-Karabakh wherein Acting Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Yuri Kim stated, “the United States will not countenance any action or effort—short-term or long-term—to ethnically cleanse or commit other atrocities against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. The current humanitarian situation is not acceptable.”
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​Despite these and similar such warnings, on September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh resulting in the death and injury of innocent civilians and the forced displacement of some 120,000 Christian Armenians who fled to Armenia. This assault on all fronts was the culmination of Azerbaijan’s genocidal campaign against the Armenian people that included the illegal blockade of the Lachin Corridor starting in December 2022 that placed the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh under siege and threat of starvation.