June 06, 2025
by Igor Mirzakhanyan
In an unprecedented development before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), both Armenia and Azerbaijan have expressed their intention to withdraw all pending interstate applications submitted against each other. As part of their ongoing peace negotiations following the 2020-2023 hostilities, the two countries have reportedly committed not only to discontinuing their current cases before the ECtHR and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but also to refraining from initiating any new proceedings in future. This political pledge, however, raises complex legal and institutional questions about the fate of interstate litigation under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR or the Convention) – especially when it concerns large-scale human rights violations and hundreds of thousands of victims.
Currently, six interstate applications are pending between Armenia and Azerbaijan before the ECtHR, all arising from the context of the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) conflict and addressing allegations such as extrajudicial killings, torture, infringements upon property rights, forced displacement, and restrictions on the right of return. An additional interstate application has been lodged by Armenia against Türkiye. Together, these six plus one cases represent half of the ECtHR’s active interstate docket.
The first interstate proceeding concerning the conflict was initiated by Armenia on 27 September 2020, the day hostilities escalated, with a request for interim measures under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court (Armenia v. Azerbaijan (no. 1)). Two days later, the ECtHR ordered both Armenia and Azerbaijan to refrain from actions that could lead to breaches of the Convention, particularly regarding the right to life (Article 2) and the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment (Article 3). This interim measure remains in force to date.
Shortly thereafter, Azerbaijan filed a mirroring application (Azerbaijan v. Armenia), also requesting further interim measures. The ECtHR found that the matters raised were already addressed by its earlier decisions.
These applications chiefly concern the recent rounds of hostilities and include allegations of indiscriminate attacks against civilians and infrastructure, ill-treatment of detainees, enforced disappearances, and mass displacement. Azerbaijan’s application further alleges violations dating back to the early 1990s, including displacement, destruction of cultural property, and failure to investigate disappearances. Both cases have been communicated to the parties and relinquished in favour of the Grand Chamber.
On 29 June 2021, Armenia submitted a second application (Armenia v. Azerbaijan (no. 2)) focusing on the treatment of detained and convicted individuals. This case has also been communicated to the respondent State. This was followed by a third application less than two months later, on 24 August 2021 (Armenia v. Azerbaijan (no. 3)), concerning alleged violations committed on the sovereign territory of Armenia proper. The fourth application (Armenia v. Azerbaijan (no. 4)), lodged on 24 March 2022 and supplemented in 2023, addresses the blockade of the Lachin Corridor and the displacement of the population from Artsakh. Publicly available information does not yet indicate whether the third and fourth applications have been communicated.
Separately, Azerbaijan filed a second application on 18 August 2022 (Azerbaijan v. Armenia (no.2)), concerning the resettlement of displaced persons after the 2020 hostilities. This case has been communicated to Armenia but has not been relinquished to the Grand Chamber.
All these cases collectively concern the alleged violations of the rights of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Nonetheless, the parties have indicated their intention to withdraw these proceedings as part of their broader peace negotiations.
In March 2025, Armenia and Azerbaijan announced the conclusion of negotiations on the ‘Agreement on Peace and Establishment of Interstate Relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan.’ Although the full text has not been made public, statements by foreign ministries of both countries confirm that, upon the agreement’s entry into force, the parties intend to withdraw all existing interstate cases before the ECtHR and commit not to initiate further proceedings concerning past events. Reports suggest that the provision on withdrawal was one of the two remaining points of debate during the negotiations.
If carried out, this would mark an unprecedented instance of collective withdrawal of multiple interstate cases from the ECtHR in the pursuit of a political settlement. Given the scale of the alleged violations and the number of individuals affected, the situation raises significant legal and procedural questions, not only regarding the ECtHR’s framework but also in relation to broader principles of truth, accountability, and access to justice for victims.
The legal framework governing the withdrawal of cases before the ECtHR remains relatively underdeveloped, as such withdrawals are not a common practice. The applicable rules are even more general and vague when it comes to interstate applications.
Article 37 (1) (a) of the ECHR provides that the ECtHR may at any stage of the proceedings strike an application out of its list of cases if the applicant does not intend to pursue the application. This provision is formulated in broad terms and applies equally to individual and interstate cases. Further guidance is therefore found in paragraph 2 of Rule 43 of the Rules of Court, which specifically addresses interstate applications. It states that ‘when an applicant Contracting Party notifies the Registrar of its intention not to proceed with the case, the Chamber may [emphasis added] strike the application out of the Court’s list under Article 37 of the Convention, provided that the other Contracting Party or Parties concerned agree to the discontinuance.’ In other words, where there is mutual agreement—such as in the present situation, between Armenia and Azerbaijan—the Court may remove the case from its docket.
However, it is important to note that the language used in both the Convention and the Rules of Court is permissive rather than mandatory. The ECtHR ‘may’ strike the case out, but it is not obliged to do so. Moreover, Article 37 expressly requires the ECtHR to continue the examination of a case if ‘respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and the Protocols thereto so requires.’
Thus, while procedural provisions exist to allow for the withdrawal of interstate applications, the final decision rests with the Court. It retains the discretion to assess whether the interests of the parties align with the broader interests of justice, and whether discontinuance would be compatible with the fundamental principles underlying the Convention system.
Although brought by States, interstate applications before the ECtHR are not designed to advance State interests. Rather, their purpose is to safeguard the rights of individuals who might otherwise be unable to access justice. This principle highlights the representational role of the applicant State in such proceedings. The ECtHR’s jurisprudence has consistently reaffirmed that, even in interstate cases, the primary ‘injured party’ remains the individual whose rights have allegedly been violated (see Slovenia v. Croatia, para 66; Cyprus v. Turkey, para 46).
This approach is echoed in the case law of other regional and international courts, including the ICJ, which has emphasised that in such proceedings, States act not in pursuit of their own interests but in defence of a shared legal order and the fundamental rights enshrined in human rights treaties (see ICJ Advisory Opinion of 28 May 1951 on Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ICJ Reports 1951, p. 23; Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion OC-2/82 of 24 September 1982, para 29).
Accordingly, interstate applications are filed to vindicate the rights of affected individuals, and the applicant State assumes a duty to act in their collective interest. This duty should not be compromised by political considerations or procedural expediency, particularly where, as in the present situation, the scale and gravity of the alleged violations call for sustained judicial scrutiny. While the decision to withdraw remains within the sovereign discretion of the States, such a step must not come at the expense of the rights and consideration owed to hundreds of thousands of individuals.
Those likely to be impacted by such a withdrawal have already begun to voice their concerns. In particular, more than three dozen civil society organisations, alongside groups of human rights defenders and activists, have publicly expressed their opposition to the discontinuance of the interstate cases. They have warned that abandoning the cases would cause irreparable harm to victims and have even indicated their intention to initiate legal action against the Armenian government should the cases be withdrawn. No similar public statements have been reported on thus far from the Azerbaijani side.
The rationale behind these concerns is clear. If the cases are withdrawn, many questions would remain unanswered for the victims: For example, will the alleged violations remain unexamined? Will victims be left without recognition, remedy, or reparation? To date, there is no public evidence that the arrangements between the two states involve any concrete measures to address the harm suffered by individuals in any manner. The absence of such provisions not only sidelines the needs of those directly affected but also raises serious concerns about the broader implications of terminating proceedings without securing any form of justice for the victims.
While individual applications might, in theory, remain an option, in practice many victims are unable to bring individual claims due to displacement, lack of information, fear of retaliation, or the overwhelming complexity of their circumstances. It must also be emphasised that these proceedings are not about isolated incidents viewed in a vacuum; they address widespread and systematic violations arising from a prolonged armed conflict, affecting hundreds of thousands of individuals on both sides.
The ECtHR has, in previous instances, used interstate judgments to provide broader acknowledgement of mass violations and to establish State responsibility. Should these proceedings be discontinued, there is a real risk that a critical opportunity for truth and reconciliation, victim recognition, and justice would be lost — undermining the ECtHR’s long-standing victim-centred approach.
In practice, there are no recorded instances of voluntary withdrawals in interstate cases. Most prior interstate proceedings have involved prolonged litigation and were not concluded through mutual discontinuance. The current situation therefore presents a largely untested scenario: a joint decision by two States to terminate multiple large-scale applications for political reasons—applications that together constitute nearly half of the ECtHR’s pending interstate docket.
If both States formally request the termination of proceedings, the ECtHR would face a delicate balancing act. On one hand, it must respect State sovereignty and efforts to achieve peaceful resolution. On the other, it must safeguard the integrity of the Convention system and ensure that justice is not sacrificed for political expediency.
As discussed above, Article 37 of the Convention grants the ECtHR discretion to refuse a request for withdrawal if it considers that continuing the examination of the case is necessary for the protection of human rights. The ECtHR has already exercised this discretion in individual cases (see for example Karner v. Austria, paras 21-29) and it is particularly important in the context of interstate applications involving systemic abuses and large victim populations.
Allowing the withdrawal of these cases without further judicial engagement would risk severely undermining the right to an effective remedy under Article 13 of the Convention, as well as the broader principle of the right to truth as recognised in the ECtHR’s jurisprudence. Hundreds of thousands of victims currently have a legitimate expectation that their rights are being represented by their States before the ECtHR. If this expectation is frustrated, victims would be left with no alternative but to pursue individual applications – potentially amounting to hundreds of thousands – placing an extraordinary and unprecedented burden on the ECtHR’s resources and administrative capacity. In procedural terms, it is far more manageable for the ECtHR to address six interstate applications than to process thousands of individual complaints arising from the same facts.
Accordingly, the ECtHR might be inclined to reject the proposed discontinuance or to find an alternative way to uphold the procedural integrity of these cases. One possible solution could be for the ECtHR to invite human rights organisations or other appropriate entities to step in as ‘representational heirs’ of the withdrawing states, thereby allowing the proceedings to continue on behalf of the affected victims. Although such an approach is not explicitly provided for in the Convention or the Rules of Court, it would be consistent with the Convention’s ‘living instrument’ doctrine and the ECtHR’s established practice of adapting procedures to serve the fundamental purposes of justice. Admittedly, there appears to be no direct precedent for this course of action within the Court’s existing jurisprudence or in the broader practice of international tribunals. However, the idea draws on the well-established legal principle that representation in legal proceedings may be substituted where the original party is no longer able or willing to continue. Transposing this principle into the interstate context would not require the creation of an entirely new procedural framework but would serve to uphold the underlying objective of the Convention—to secure the rights and freedoms of individuals, even in the absence of continued state participation.
Another serious consideration for the ECtHR is the broader systemic impact of allowing full withdrawal: Does it set a precedent for States to use human rights litigation as a bargaining chip? Does it undermine the deterrent and symbolic authority of the ECtHR?
Ultimately, this is not merely a procedural or technical issue. It speaks to the ECtHR’s essential role as both a legal and moral compass for Europe. If States are permitted to withdraw interstate applications without any substantive engagement with the facts or consequences, there is a real danger that the ECtHR may be perceived not as a guardian of human rights, but as a forum of convenience—invoked when politically expedient, and discarded when inconvenient.
The decision by Armenia and Azerbaijan to withdraw their interstate applications may indeed reflect an aspiration toward reconciliation. However, for the ECtHR, it raises profound questions: Can justice be paused or undone by political consensus? Should interstate litigation be regarded merely as a matter of State discretion, or as an integral part of the broader commitment to the Convention system?
This moment could mark a turning point in the role of interstate litigation within the ECtHR system. The ECtHR’s response will shape not only its immediate docket but also the legacy of its institutional authority. In an era where accountability and historical narrative are as contested as physical territory, the ECtHR now faces a defining test: whether to preserve the relevance of interstate proceedings and uphold the rights of victims, even when states themselves choose to walk away.
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1 Comment
These “complicated” questions are easy to resolve: if there is no plaintiff, then the court must dismiss the case. Period. The ECtHR takes action upon complaint, and its jurisdiction depends on the complaint lodged. It has no authority whatsoever to investigate human rights violations without being legitimized by a pending complaint; the fact that this may sometimes be desirable from a human rights perspective does not change this.