On April 8, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ashot Hovakimian, who pays a visit to Geneva, participated in the High-level conference Preventing Violent Extremism – The Way Forward, jointly organized by the United Nations and Switzerland. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland Didier Burkhalter moderated High-level segment.

Dozens of FMs and DFMs, as well as respective officials from international structures dealing with prevention of violent extremism and fight against terrorism attended the High-level conference.

In his remarks, Deputy Foreign Minister Hovakimian mentioned that before addressing violent extremism that leads to terrorism and gross human rights violations, it is important to understand the phenomenon we are trying to counter. When the core and periphery of activities of violent extremists are blurred all of us are destined to get together in pursuit of a common strategy. Deputy FM mentioned that however, it is apparent that this does not mean that we should shy away to notice that contemporary forms of violent extremism target communities based on their religion or ethnicity. The identity based crimes of terrorist entities such as ISIL and Al Nusra Front are particular grave in the core area of their activities.

According to Deputy Foreign Minister, any support provided by the state parties to the terrorist entities which are engaged in perpetrating genocide should be qualified as complicity under the international law. Victim oriented approach is essential in respecting human rights while countering violent extremism. In this regard we should pay particular attention to the prevention of hate crimes since they provide intrinsic link between violent extremism and terrorism, and could lead to genocides, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ashot Hovakimian stressed, that unresolved conflicts may indeed create breeding ground for violent extremism particularly when state authorities use unresolved conflicts to suppress human rights both within and beyond their jurisdiction and propagate hatred against parties to the conflict at all levels of their society. However, this link is reflective and the violent extremism in the wider region and in the world may have adverse impact on settlement of conflicts. Incitement to identity based violence and glorification of crimes should not serve as mobilizing force by state parties to the conflict.

In his remarks, Deputy Foreign Minister reflected on continuous policy of expressions of violent extremism, vivid example of which is pardon and glorification of a convicted murderer Ramil Safarov. In context of military actions unleashed by Azerbaijan in early April, Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia particularly mentioned ISIL style executions by mutilating bodies, parading with chopped heads perpetrated by the Azerbaijani armed forces, in the borderline Talish village of Nagorno–Karabakh – blatant examples of violation of international human rights law and humanitarian law.