Statement in Response to the Address by International Holocaust Remeberance Alliance as delivered by the Permanent Delegation of Armenia at the 1174th Meeting of the Permanent Council

01 February, 2018

Mr. Chairperson,

I would like to welcome and thank the M. Michele Galizia, Deputy Chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, for his address and important remarks.

Our thanks go also to the Italian Chairmanship for organizing anti-Semitism Conference in Rome, which can be seen itself as a part of Holocaust commemoration in the OSCE.

While paying tribute to the victims of Holocaust we should also reassert our commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms and particularly to the protection of racial, religious, ethnic and national groups to make sure that the horrors of Genocide and crimes against humanity never happen again.

As we fulfill our duty of memory, we should remember that all genocides including Holocaust could have been prevented. In this regard, Genocide denial has always promoted recurrences of mass atrocities and undermined justice and reconciliation between peoples.

This year we mark 70^th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which are important frameworks of protection of ethnic and religious groups. We firmly believe that both these landmark documents need to be further streamlined in the OSCE human dimension commitments.

Genocide remembrance and education are already essential part of OSCE commitments, strongly interlinked with security. The MC Lyublyana Decision of 2005 outlines the importance of education on and remembrance of the Holocaust, as well as other genocides.

The Genocide Convention is relevant in our days as we witness mass atrocities inflicted upon the ethnic and religious groups in the OSCE neighboring region. These atrocities should be prevented and their perpetrators should be brought to justice.

Mr. Chairman,

We fully share views that victims of grave human rights violations have special needs of protection. We also think that people who throughout their millennia old history encountered systematic discrimination, survived horrors of genocide and where on the brink of extinction should be in forefront of fighting anything that may end up in intended destruction of other groups.

Armenia stands ready to closely cooperate with all individuals, organizations, participating states in fulfilling our common moral duty towards humanity and history in remembering past and preventing future genocides.

Thank you.

MFA RA
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