Armenia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Paruyr Hovhannisyan, has raised the 19 Armenian hostages unjustly held by Azerbaijan as an urgent humanitarian issue in his statement to the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee, the Permanent Mission of Armenia to the UN announced. Hovhannisyan spoke during the general debate of the Third Committee at the 81st session of the General Assembly. The Third Committee is the body of the General Assembly that handles human rights, social, and humanitarian issues.
Hovhannisyan said that as efforts to consolidate peace continue, a number of urgent humanitarian issues remain to be addressed. He raised the continued holding of 19 Armenians in Azerbaijan, the need to clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing persons, and cases of enforced disappearances. He said resolving these humanitarian issues would contribute to strengthening peace, building trust, and supporting reconciliation in the region.
He also reaffirmed Armenia’s support for further strengthening the UN human rights system to prevent human rights violations and ensure accountability. Hovhannisyan outlined Armenian efforts on human rights mechanisms, gender equality, the rights of children, and the prevention agenda.
The 19 Armenian hostages are held at the Umbaki Penitentiary Complex in the Qaradag district of Baku. 16 have been sentenced after sham trials in the Baku Military Court. 8 are former Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) political and military leaders, seized by Azerbaijani forces in September 2023 as they fled alongside more than 120,000 Armenians forcibly displaced from their ancestral homeland in Azerbaijan’s documented ethnic cleansing of occupied Artsakh.
On February 5, 2026, the Baku Military Court sentenced former Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan, former Foreign Minister David Babayan, former National Assembly Speaker Davit Ishkhanyan, former Defense Army commander Levon Mnatsakanyan, and former deputy commander Davit Manukyan to life imprisonment. Former Artsakh Presidents Arkadi Ghukasyan and Bako Sahakyan received 20-year terms. Former State Minister Ruben Vardanyan was tried separately and sentenced to 20 years on February 17, 2026. Civilian hostages Madat Babayan and Melikset Pashayan received 19-year terms, Garik Martirosyan received 18 years, Davit Alahverdyan and Levon Balayan received 16 years, and Erik Ghazaryan, Gurgen Stepanyan, and Vasil Beglaryan received 15 years. Amnesty International called the verdicts a travesty and a mockery of justice.
Hovhannisyan’s statement comes after a series of recent disclosures from inside the Umbaki prison. On October 1, former Foreign Minister David Babayan released an audio statement describing the Baku appellate court’s ruling as 99.9 percent copy-pasted from the first-instance verdict and documenting that Azerbaijan censored his counter-arguments from the appellate record. On September 16, Ruben Vardanyan recorded a public appeal to Azerbaijan’s Human Rights Commissioner Sabina Aliyeva documenting specific violations of Azerbaijan’s own legal code in the treatment of the 19 hostages, saying “However long we still spend in Umbaki, please comply with your own laws.” On September 4, attorney Siranush Sahakyan disclosed in a press briefing that Armenian Christian hostages have had their cross tattoos burned off their skin through torture and been forced to read the Quran. Sahakyan said the hostages are also held in absolute isolation from other prisoners and have arrived at proceedings with fractures from beatings.
Azerbaijan expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross in September 2025, ending the last independent access to the Armenian hostages. Former International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo published a legal opinion in August 2023 concluding that the nine-month Azerbaijani blockade of Artsakh that preceded the September 2023 ethnic cleansing constituted genocide under the Genocide Convention. The International Court of Justice ordered Azerbaijan on November 17, 2023, by 13 votes to 2, to ensure that Armenians who left Artsakh after September 19, 2023 could return in a safe, unimpeded, and expeditious manner. Azerbaijan has never complied.
