January 17, 2022

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Christian Solidarity International

The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

January 17, 2022

Christian Solidarity International (CSI) urges you to seek a resolution at the United Nations Security Council to demand an end to Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno Karabakh, and to authorize a multilateral humanitarian airlift to the region if Azerbaijan does not comply.

Nagorno Karabakh has been under a complete blockade since December 12. The government of Azerbaijan is blocking the only road that connects the region and its 120,000 residents to Armenia, and thus to the rest of the world. Azerbaijan has also interrupted the region’s access to gas, electricity, and telecommunications.

As usual, the weak are suffering the most – cancer patients cannot receive the treatment they need, baby formula and diapers are becoming impossible to find, and the poor and elderly are at risk of freezing in the below-freezing temperatures.

Now, however, stores of food and fuel for the general population are running low as well. We are, at most, weeks away from the “significant humanitarian crisis” about which the Administrator of USAID, Samantha Power, warned on December 15.

The aim of this blockade is clear. Azerbaijan intends to conquer Nagorno Karabakh by, in the words of the Genocide Convention, “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the end of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group in whole or in part.”

As Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, stated at the beginning of the blockade, “Today we see consistent actions which make more and more real the concern that Azerbaijan is indeed planning genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh.”

U.S. diplomats have clearly condemned Azerbaijan’s blockade, for which we are grateful. But now is the time for action.

By securing a UN Security Council resolution to protect the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, and mounting a humanitarian airlift to rescue them, you will enhance American leadership, empower Armenia’s democratically-elected government, unite the world in a humanitarian endeavor, and move the region closer to a final peace agreement based on the principles of human rights and self-determination of peoples.

Failure to act will have world-historical consequences. If Azerbaijan’s aggression against Armenians does not end, the region may be plunged back into violence. If Azerbaijan succeeds in conquering Nagorno-Karabakh, ethnic cleansing on a mass scale will take place, a priceless part of humanity’s common cultural heritage will be destroyed, and dictatorships everywhere will see that aggression is rewarded in today’s international order.

You are the first American president to recognize the Armenian Genocide. We urge you not to allow another Armenian Genocide to occur on your watch.

Respectfully,

Dr. John Eibner
President
Christian Solidarity International

Baroness Cox of Queensbury
Founding President
Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust