WASHINGTON, DC – The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) today gave the Biden Administration a failing grade for arming, abetting, and emboldening Azerbaijan’s 2023 genocide of Artsakh’s indigenous Armenians, refusing to hold the Aliyev regime accountable for its crimes, undertaking no meaningful steps to secure the return of Artsakh Armenians or the release of Armenian hostages, and providing only minimal assistance to at-risk Artsakh refugees.
ANCA Statement on the Biden Administration’s Failure to Address Azerbaijan’s Genocide of Artsakh
The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) is profoundly disappointed by the Biden-Harris Administration for their continued refusal to take meaningful action to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its genocidal assault on Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) last year, its silence on the right of return for the indigenous Armenians of Artsakh, and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) failure to provide urgently needed humanitarian assistance to the over 120,000 Armenian refugees forced from their homes.
During the 2020 Artsakh War, the Biden-Harris campaign made lofty promises to the Armenian American community – pledging to prohibit U.S. military assistance to Azerbaijan. Just months later, the Biden Administration reneged on that commitment – and, in a callous act of betrayal, announced the reauthorization of security assistance to Azerbaijan just a day before recognizing the Armenian Genocide. The Biden-Harris Administration again reauthorized military assistance to Azerbaijan in 2022, even in the wake of Azerbaijan’s widely documented human rights violations and incursion into the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia – sending a clear signal to the despotic Aliyev regime that it would face no consequences for its authoritarian aggression.
There is no clearer example of the Biden-Harris Administration’s two-faced policy towards Armenia than the spineless inaction of USAID Administrator Samantha Power during Azerbaijan’s blockade and ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh. As Azerbaijan deprived Artsakh’s 120,000 Armenians of access to food, fuel, medicine, and humanitarian goods in a brazen violation of international law – Administrator Power refused to acknowledge the dire humanitarian crisis unfolding. The genocidal ethnic cleansing of Artsakh’s entire Armenian population was a humanitarian catastrophe the United States had every opportunity to prevent but instead chose to enable – sacrificing the existence of the region’s indigenous Christian Armenian population for misguided geopolitical interests.
