Submission to the UN Working Group on the Discrimination Against Women and Girls Regarding Women Forcibly Displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh
30 January 2026
Introduction
Over 120,000 people were forcibly displaced from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, before and during Azerbaijan's military offensive in September-October 2023, which emptied the region of its Armenian population within 10 days. The offensive culminated three years of intensifying rights abuses that constituted a broader, brutal campaign to expel Armenians from their homes in the region – a campaign which human rights organizations and experts in the field warned had the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing and even genocide. Women bore a particular toll, enduring the collapse of reproductive healthcare systems in Nagorno-Karabakh before Azerbaijan's 2023 escalation and representing more than 50% of those who fled because of it, according to UN estimates. Now, women forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, who number in the tens of thousands, are facing extreme economic vulnerability, housing insecurity, and an array of distinct and discriminatory socioeconomic challenges in Armenia. Their precarious position is directly traceable to their forced displacement from their homes and loss of their land, material possessions, and once-tight-knit communities.
Both the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as the socioeconomic struggles arising from and following it, remain urgent matters of discrimination and violence against a group of women and girls in Armenia warranting the attention of the Working Group ahead of and during its March 2026 country visit. The following report, which elaborates on some of these issues and provides recommendations to the Working Group for contacts, sites, and policy advocacy, is submitted jointly by Artsakh Union and the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR), based on the extensive research and engagement of both organizations in the region.
