Last December, just as Azerbaijan imposed a blockade on my home, Nagorno-Karabakh, I learned that I was pregnant with twins. I could hardly imagine back then the harsh reality into which my children would be born.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an Armenian-populated enclave that, due to the vagaries of Soviet history, ended up in Azerbaijan, a country that is hostile to us and wishes us to flee. By blocking the Lachin Corridor, a road that is our lifeline to nearby Armenia and to the world, Azerbaijan has created an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis that has reached a catastrophic tipping point in recent days, when the first resident died of starvation.
I welcomed my twin girls on Aug. 20, and I was very lucky: Many other pregnant women suffered the loss of their babies due to malnutrition, lack of necessary medicine, food, and psychological hardships. In July, as I was preparing for the delivery, authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh announced that anemia among pregnant women had soared to 90 percent, resulting in a significant increase in perinatal mortality and miscarriages.
Instead of enjoying the otherwise joyous occasion, I now worry about their survival amid what has been described as an active policy of genocide aimed at starving our people. Baby supplies are depleted in the stores and with no fuel or public transportation, I have to rely on walking many kilometers to find places where basics are still available, scrounging daily to provide for my family.
Since the birth, I managed to find a single box of diapers for my twin girls. The baby stroller I ordered never reached Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving me without options as there are no special strollers for twins anywhere to be found.
With all food, medicine and critical supplies completely blocked from reaching our population of 120,000, we are on the brink of starvation and fatal consequences from lack of medical care.
About 2,000 pregnant women, 30,000 children, 20,000 elderly people, and 9,000 others with disabilities are caught in the throes of malnutrition, deprivation, and lack of medicine.
The tragedy is underscored by the words of former International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, who has declared that the situation qualifies as a genocide under Article II c) of the Genocide Convention. He called starvation an "invisible genocide weapon," emphasizing the slow but relentless destruction being wrought upon the Armenians in the region.
My family roots run deep in Nagorno-Karabakh. My parents endured the events of the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the early 1990s, which was successfully fought to avoid exactly what we see today—the ethnic cleansing of Armenians by the authoritarian leadership in Azerbaijan.
That war established self-government in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan attacked in 2020, and in that second war, in which thousands of Armenians died, it occupied much of the area around us. During the 44-day war, I had to give up on my dream of having my wedding in nearby Shushi, as Azerbaijani forces invaded just days before the ceremony.
Now they want us to flee even the small area we have left or succumb to the despotic rule of Baku.
Azerbaijan is carrying out its methodical campaign with impunity and in defiance of international humanitarian norms, as well as an explicit order from the International Court of Justice in February that it reopen the Lachin Corridor.
My grandparents, parents, and neighbors always shared stories about the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the Baku pogroms and Sumgait massacre of the 1980s, but I couldn't fathom such atrocities taking place once again in my lifetime. I dreamed of a world where my children would not confront the threat of genocide. That dream is obviously in great danger.
I do not want my children or any children in the world to ever know what genocide is, or even hear the word.
I fear that my voice is not being heard. Our pleas are met by talk of geopolitical interests—and by a crushing indifference that gives aid and comfort to aggressors wherever they may be.
As a new mother, I appeal to the world on behalf of all the women, children, and men who share my situation: the world cannot and must not be silent to the genocide against Nagorno-Karabakh.
Maria Aghajanyan, a native of Nagorno-Karabakh, is an attorney and mother of two.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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