The Swiss Peace Initiative for Nagorno-Karabakh was highlighted at the September session of the Human Rights Council and during a side event at the UN in Geneva, during the week ending Oct. 4, supported by Swiss parliamentarians.

The event was hosted by Christian Solidarity International.

"It is still not too late to undo the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh," Christian Solidarity International's UN representative Abi McDougal told the Human Rights Council when she spoke at a session on Oct. 2.

The initiative is an international measure for upholding the right of return for 150,000 people displaced from their homeland she said.

The statement came during the second anniversary of the exodus of Armenian Christians from Nagorno Karabakh (or Artsakh), who were forcibly displaced from their homeland by Azerbaijan's military invasion in September-October 2023.

McDougal cited the Swiss Peace Initiative for Nagorno Karabakh as a feasible means to implement the right of return of these Armenians.

She explained that on November 17, 2023, the International Court of Justice ruled that Azerbaijan must "ensure that persons who have left Nagorno-Karabakh after 19 September 2023 and who wish to return to Nagorno-Karabakh can do so in a safe, unimpeded and expeditious manner."

"Thus far, the international community has taken no steps to ensure this order is implemented," McDougal pointed out.

Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh by Armenians, is a mountainous region located at the southern end of the Karabakh mountain range, within Azerbaijan.

It is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but until 2023, its inhabitants were predominantly ethnic Armenians.

The CSI representative spoke of the Swiss Peace Initiative as a "neutral, credible, and law-based framework to acknowledge and operationalize the right of return for Nagorno Karabakh's Armenian population."

In March, the Swiss parliament authorized the government to hold a peace forum under international supervision between Azerbaijan and representatives of displaced Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh, "to negotiate the collective return, in complete security, of the Armenian population."

On Sept. 29, CSI held an event coinciding with the Human Rights Council, where two members of the Swiss parliament, Erich Vontobel from Zurich and Nicolas Walder from Geneva, presented the Swiss Peace Initiative to diplomats and NGO staff at the UN.

They were joined by Artak Beglaryan, the former human rights ombudsman of the Republic of Artsakh and president of the Artsakh Union, along with Dr. Paul Williams, a peace negotiator known worldwide.

Vontobel, a representative of the Swiss Democratic Union (EDU), which he describes as a "Christian" party, in the Federal Council Assembly, and is responsible for affairs relating to Armenia and Azerbaijan. He said he had visited Armenia and spoke to refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh.

"The displacement of over 100,000 people is a clear violation of international law...If Switzerland accepts this, we lose our credibility," said the Swiss parliamentarian, noting he represents a "Christian party."

He said that a real risk of conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia remains, and diplomacy remains the only viable path forward.

A motion put forward by Vontobel had been accepted in the assembly with cross-party support.

He said that is how the Swiss peace initiative was born. The initiative does not call for sanctions or interventions, but for dialogue, he said, and broad international support is needed because the problem remains unsolved.

Walder, a member of the left-leaning Green Party, said that credible figures had described the events that took place in 2023 as genocide and ethnic cleansing, and that Russian peacekeepers had failed to ensure security guarantees.

"Geopolitical rivalry overshadowed the international duty to protect the civilian population," said Walder, noting that more than 80 per cent of the people displaced from Nagorno Karabakh want to return home.

He said international agreements on Nagorno-Karabakh mediated by the United States and signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan speak about peace but have ignored the "primary party" of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian forcibly displaced people from there.

"Ignoring the primary victim and party of the conflict doesn't mean sustainable and comprehensive peace. This peace will mean an inclusive and just process which will put the return of people at the center of any kind of settlement," said Walder.

He said strong international security guarantees are needed/.

In May, the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, in collaboration with the Protestant Church in Switzerland, had convened the Armenian Heritage Conference in Bern, the location of the Swiss parliament.

It was titled, "Religious Freedom: Preserving Armenian Spiritual, Cultural and Historical Heritage in Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh."

The WCC and the Swiss Protestant Churches issued an urgent call for immediate action to the international community at a press conference during the event.

"The destruction of Armenian sacred heritage is not only an attack on history, but on religious freedom, on human dignity, and on the values that bind humanity across traditions," the WCC secretary general Rev. Jerry Pillay had said in an opening speech.

"This conference is an act of moral resistance and spiritual solidarity."