Mr. Chairman,

The first time I addressed this forum seven years ago, Armenia was not yet a member of the Council of Europe, was not a member of this Commission, and the responsibilities and obligations facing us appeared overwhelming. Today, as I take stock of where we were and how far we’ve come, I am pleased to say that Armenia has had a role to play in the efforts to promote, espouse, advocate, even celebrate human rights. The freedoms enjoyed in many countries, the freedoms that make some societies the envy of the world, are the right of each individual man, woman and child. As societies and governments represented here, we gather to reaffirm our commitments and to continue the search for ways to make those ideals real.

This 60th session is symbolic of all our hard-learned lessons. The struggle to articulate, explain, codify, legislate, impose, ensure human rights in each society has been both international and local. We wish to achieve universal access to and guarantee of human rights for all the world’s citizens. Whether motivated by altruism or enlightened self-interest, we want the same civil liberties for the old and new democracies, the big and small powers, the developed and developing nations. As a new democracy, a small country following the path to development, we know that what happens inside countries – large and small -- can have and has had, a huge effect on the rest of the world.

While symbols should not be mistaken for substance, they should not be dismissed as insubstantial, either. The gains that we have made are testimony to the truism that what is right is also good. Many of today’s social ills, and the economic ones, too, will be well on their way to disappearing if human rights are accepted, absorbed, respected and implemented as inarguable, inalienable, unalterable rights.

This is why older democracies – having suffered first-hand the risks of civil societies which do not extend human rights protections -- are determined to instill good governance mechanisms around the world. That is why international organizations include the human dimension as a significant component of their security concerns. That is why the terror of terrorism has imposed discussions of the elimination of human rights violations as solutions.

The driving force is not just philosophy and idealism but also politics and pragmatism. Societies which respect the human rights of their own people are more likely to respect the rights of their neighbors. Countries which acknowledge that national aspirations can be given their just dues without resorting to violence or aggression are the kinds of societies in which we ourselves wish to live, and which we all want at our borders. Those among us who can confront remembered wrongs without committing new ones will have earned the right to call ourselves modern, inclusive, tolerant, neighborly.

That is what we want for our neighborhood.

From the Caspian to the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the South Caucasus, the Northern Middle East is a cauldron of constant dynamic change, geopolitical fermentation, domestic and sub regional threats, and multi-power interest and competition. An uneven distribution of resources, mixed with a bumpy path to regional development and cooperation makes good governance based on a respect for individual rights even more critical for the interests of governments and citizens alike. We know that this requires a determination generated inside our societies. It necessitates intellectual and practical conversions that go beyond our international commitments.

Towards this end, the comments, observations and even admonitions of various countries and international organizations on our human rights accomplishments and goals is acknowledged, and appreciated. We know that this is a win-win struggle, where what is good for Armenia is also good for the region. But we also know that preaching democracy is no substitute for the sustained efforts essential to create a healthy society, which in turn will guarantee the health of the state. We are ready to work with all those who comprehend the natural process of maturation needed for these changes to be authentic and deep-rooted, not cosmetic and short-lived.

In Armenia, where human rights has been on our collective agenda for just one sixth of these 60 years, changes have already begun to take root. This year, the death penalty was abolished. The inherent right to life is now guaranteed for all our citizens. Just a few months ago, an ombudsman was appointed to hear grievances and facilitate solutions.

Armenia’s minority populations, although small in number, continue to enjoy the government’s attention and equal protections under the law.

Trafficking, an emergent global evil, is the object of an interagency plan to eradicate the local conditions and mechanisms that enable this crime.

The National Plan of Action for Children was approved to coordinate Armenia’s obligations and programs for children – a vulnerable group whose basic quality of life indicators are paradoxical, just like those of their parents. Our kids are the victims of drastic and still incomplete economic and social transitions. Their access to nutrition and medicine is sometimes in jeopardy, but not to culture and education. This same dilemma is at the root of our implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, which when met, will go farther than any declaration to protect the basic rights of each individual citizen.

Just as those goals are still not completely met, neither are programs to grow an independent judiciary. The road plan is there, but we still have far to travel. We are working with the Council of Europe on judicial and electoral reforms. The same is true for a fully participatory transparent legislative process. The existence of laws does not mean that their implementation is full and comprehensive. Our laws on press freedoms continue to be reformed in line with Council of Europe standards. We are committed to arriving at improved legislation. But we also know that legislatively facilitated press freedoms have still not resulted in an intellectually and fiscally free and responsible press.

That we can even make these lists, and slowly cross off some of the items listed there, is ample indication that we are fully engaged in one of society’s hardest tasks: to equally and broadly allocate the rights, privileges, benefits of human civilization.

But, Mr. Chairman,the world is not there yet. Even as the world champions human rights, we tolerate excessive human wrongs.

We tolerate atrocities, massacres, ethnic cleansing so long as they happen in distant lands. We tolerate their memories and approve the deniers. We tolerate historians who claim that there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing and its logical progression, genocide. Armenians have experienced these inexplicable human wrongs for a hundred years. We who have suffered these crimes have declared that the best way, the only way to restore faith and confidence is for perpetrators and victims to acknowledge the past, and move on to the future. Ironically, it is we the victims who have and who continue to make these unconditional offers. The perpetrators, old and new, do not. We do so, moved by a need to restore relations between peoples who have been and will continue to be neighbors. It is not for history’s sake alone that we insist on acknowledging the past, but for the sake of the future. The political obstacles, the economic blockade that exist today are left over from an unfinished and unreconciled past. We want to move on to a collaborative and cooperative future. For that, our neighbors must sit with us today, in the present, with a will to recover that which the past has erased.

In our neighborhood, the past is not buried in history. Today’s grievances in our region are the consequences, expressions and manifestations of human rights abuses, not their causes.

There were no refugees and no territorial issues when the people of Nagorno Karabakh, legally, in accordance with the legislation of the time, followed all necessary steps, to opt for self-determination. The state abrogated its responsibility to provide safety and security for its population. Instead, the response was military aggression.

It is very telling that a sovereign government responded to its people’s democratic calls for self-determination with military means. Moreover, the violent, military response was not directed against the population of Nagorno Karabakh alone, but also against Armenians in Sumgait and Baku, miles away from the territory and population of Nagorno Karabakh.

This was ethnic cleansing -- the first time that 'solution' was brought to and utilized in the former Soviet space -- even before it showed its head in the Balkans. The Armenians who were driven out were the first refugees in the former Soviet Union.

Despite Armenians' continuous victimization, despite recent memories of pogroms and deportations, despite the continuing fragile defensive, protective position of Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh, Armenians continue to express readiness to arrive at some compromise settlement. This is not diplomatic talk. The Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh have held legitimate elections, are building a civil society based on legislation which protects human rights, and are preparing for the day when their own rights to self-determination and a life of peace and dignity will be recognized.

Mr. Chairman,

Unfortunately, the past is not behind us. Earlier this month, in Budapest, in a North Atlantic Cooperation Council training program, the concept of cooperation was shockingly shaken by the murder of an Armenian soldier by an Azerbaijani officer. This expression of ethnic hatred is more than disturbing, as we continue to search for solutions that will allow us to coexist in peace in this region.

That is why we continue to call on our neighbors to join us in searching for ways to go forward. In a complex, problematic neighborhood, heavily burdened with history, we know full well that human rights, when equally and indiscriminately protected, will mean the ability to protect the safety, security and dignity of entire populations, whole countries and regions. It truly does start with each country, one person at a time.

Mr. Chairman,

We wish to join in welcoming Justice Louise Arbour to her new position as the new High Commissioner for Human Rights. We would have wished her good luck even had this meeting taken place a week ago, and we do so, even more, today. In the wake of the shocking, frightening, inexplainable horror that hit Spain and the world just a few days ago, I must repeat that which we all know: there is a way to beat the terrorism, to defeat those who are bent on destroying a way of life. That way is to unite in implementing the ideas which we all hold dear, in making possible the democratic systems which breed stability, in protecting the human rights of all mankind so that we never again need to protect ourselves from ourselves.