The Human Rights situation of the Yezidi minority - UNHCR

specific law on national minorities, as envisaged by their membership of the Council of
Europe, and national minorities are therefore protected mainly under general nondiscrimination
provisions scattered through a range of legislative acts. The non-resolution of
secessionist conflict and the emphasis on ethnic majority nation-building have impeded the
elaboration of comprehensive minority rights frameworks, although in all three republics it is
usually the absence of resources that is used to explain inertia in this field.
4.1 National Minority Rights in Armenia
The issue of national minorities in Armenia in recent history has very much taken second
place after the issue of Armenian national minorities in neighbouring states, first and
foremost Azerbaijan. Armenia was always the most ethnically homogeneous of the Soviet
republics and by the end of the Soviet period the only sizeable minority in Armenia was the
Azerbaijani population. This population, along with Armenia’s Muslim Kurds, was expelled
during the process of mutual expulsions between Armenia and Azerbaijan of each other’s
ethnic populations following the onset of conflict in Nagorny Karabakh, an autonomous
region of Soviet Azerbaijan populated by a local Armenian majority. The arrival of over
300,000 ethnic Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan contributed to the consolidation of a
near-total ethnic Armenian majority in post-conflict Armenia. The 2002 census recorded 97.7
per cent of the total population of the republic as being ethnic Armenian. Armenia’s
minorities are, furthermore, dispersed and none constitute local majorities in any given
administrative unit. This situation accounts for the low prominence of minority rights as an
issue in Armenia.
Although avoiding the image of a state with significant human rights problems, Armenia’s
human rights record since independence is patchy. Although parts of the Armenian economy
have flourished despite closed borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan, pervasive corruption,
collusion between business and political elites, flawed elections and the uncertainty
associated with the non-resolution of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict have compromised
progress in forming democratic institutions. The fragility of this progress has been
demonstrated on several occasions, such as the 27 October 1999 shootings in the National
Assembly and the March 2008 unrest, in which eight people died, following a disputed result
in February’s presidential election.
Following the chaotic years of the early 1990s serious attention began to be paid to the issue
of national minorities in late 1990s. Although a number of rights are enshrined in the
Constitution and other domestic laws, progress in establishing concrete laws addressing
minority rights has been slow.
4.1.1 Human and Minority Rights Instruments
Armenia is a State party to major international human rights instruments, including the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the European Convention on Human Rights
(ECHR), the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM), the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD),
the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the (Revised) European Social
Charter.
Article 14 of the Armenian Constitution prohibits any discrimination on grounds of “race,
colour, ethnic origin…, language, religion or belief, or…membership of a national minority”.
Article 26 provides for the freedom of conscience or belief and Article 41 confers the right to
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