Who Will Preserve Armenian Cultural Heritage in Nagorno Karabakh?

St. Hovhannes Church of Chahuk -
destroyed between 1997 and 2009
(Caucasus Heritage Watch).

It’s “only” 150,000 or so people but it’s interesting how little attention has been paid to the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh that happened just a few weeks ago ( Ruslan Javadov, 'As an Azerbaijani, I have to speak out about my country’s ethnic cleansing of Armenians', Guardian Mon 9 Oct 2023 ). Armenians leave behind a rich cultural and religious landscape with scores of heritage sites, from exquisite medieval monasteries to modest village churches, to historic cemeteries with iconic engraved cross stones. The risk of destruction and falsification of these cultural and religious sites is immense. As Azerbaijan takes sovereign control over Nagorno-Karabakh, some 200-300 Armenian cultural heritage sites will be endangered.

 Adam T. Smith is a professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences and co-director of Caucasus Heritage Watch, a group that has been monitoring heritage sites at risk in the region. He paints a picture of what will happen if multilateral organizations like UNESCO fail to protect Armenian cultural heritage.

“World institutions of heritage protection today face the most profound test of their legitimacy since World War II in the mountains of the South Caucasus," says Smith. "Multilateral organizations like UNESCO and national centers of heritage preservation like the Cultural Heritage Office in the US State Department were silent as Azerbaijan dismantled Armenian cultural heritage in Nakhchivan and have raised no public protest against the ongoing destruction in Nagorno-Karabakh. “If these organizations fail, another irreplaceable medieval and early modern Armenian cultural landscape will vanish. And other national leaders, hostile to ethnic minorities in their midst, will see inaction as a green light for their own purging of humanity’s past. The result will be an impoverished archaeological record, a human past rebuilt around intolerant fictions of national homogeneity and a future deprived of our tangible monuments to human creativity, tolerance and peace. UNESCO and international organizations committed to preservation must not fail in protecting the cultural heritage of the South Caucasus," says Smith.