European Court of Human RIghts.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will be delivering a Grand Chamber judgment in the case of Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan at a public hearing on June 16 in Strasbourg.
According to a June 10 press release by the ECHR, the case concerns the Sargsyan family, who, after being forced to flee from their village of Gulistan in the Shahumyan region in 1992 during the Karabakh War, have since been denied the right to have access to their property, home and the graves of their relatives.
The European Human Rights Advocacy Center stated that this landmark case may have “exceptional significance” for over a million internally displaced people in Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The original applicant was Minas Sargsyan, who passed away in 2009 and his widow Lena. Their two children have been pursuing the application on their behalf. Their case is being brought to the ECHR by the European Human Rights Advocacy Center (EHRAC), based at Middlesex University in London and an Armenian NGO Legal Guide. According to the family’s legal team, the Azerbaijani government never allowed them to return to their home for security reasons.
Lena Sargsyan, widow of original applicant Minas Sargsyan.
Minas Sargsyan original applied to the ECHR in 2006.
In a June 12 article, Newsweek wrote: “The Sargsyan family claim that their inability to return to the village, and lack of compensation for the loss of their land and property, breaches both their property rights and their right to respect for their family life and home under the European Convention on Human Rights. They have also argued that they are unable to visit their relatives’ graves in the village, which they say violates their human rights.”
The director of EHRAC, Professor Phillip Leach told Newsweek that a ruling in favor of the Sargsyan family would be a landmark decision “as the European Court has not had to consider a situation like this before, and would establish the rights of refugees against governments.”
ECHR records state that the original application was lodged with the Court on August 11, 2006. On March 11, 2010 the Chamber to which the case had been assigned relinquished jurisdiction in favor of the Grand Chamber. The Armenian Government intervened as a third party. A first hearing by the Grand Chamber was held on September 15, 2010. The case was declared admissible on December 14, 2011 and a second Grand Chamber hearing was held on February 5, 2014.
The ECHR has discretion to award compensation to the Sargsyan family. Professor Leach said he believes that if there is a positive outcome, it could reinvigorate negotiations to ensure a political settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
On the same day, a parallel case against Armenia by Azerbaijani refugees (Chiragov and Others v. Armenia – application no. 13216/05) will be heard.
