In early August, Armenia and Azerbaijan finally approved the text of the peace treaty, all that remains is to sign it. What is useful in this agreement for Baku, what for Yerevan, and what issues remain unresolved?
The BBC asked these questions to Armenian, Azerbaijani and international experts.
Karabakh: the main compromise
The peace treaty was published after the meeting of the two leaders in Washington, where the foreign ministers initialed the agreement. However, it is not known when the two leaders will sign the agreement.
The text begins with the mutual recognition of territorial integrity, inviolability of borders and sovereignty.
This means that Baku has achieved its main foreign policy goal since gaining independence – Armenia’s renunciation of any claims to the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“This is the main compromise. “The entire conflict was built around the issue of Karabakh’s ownership,” said Arif Yunus, a historian of the Karabakh conflict who worked in the Azerbaijani presidential administration during the first Karabakh war.
However, this compromise is not new.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was ready to recognize Karabakh as Azerbaijani several years ago.
His position was conditioned by the situation that developed after Azerbaijan’s victory in the 2020 war and the exodus of Armenians from Karabakh as a result of the military operation of the Azerbaijani army in September 2023.
The first version of the peace treaty text was proposed to Baku and expressed a desire to legally enshrine the new realities.
“The initial version of this text was Azerbaijani, and Armenia has only tried to edit it in recent years,” said political scientist Tigran Grigoryan.
However, there is another side to mutual recognition of territorial integrity. Since May 2021, the Azerbaijani armed forces have controlled several important heights in Armenia.
Lawrence Broers describes this as a “micro-occupation of individual parts of Armenian territory.”
In addition, there is a “West Azerbaijani Community” operating in Baku, which is part of Armenia. It is not yet clear whether Azerbaijan will agree to liquidate this community and withdraw its troops from Armenian territory.
“The international recognition of the Soviet administrative borders can be considered a small concession to Baku, and this causes great tension, since in recent years Azerbaijan has periodically made statements and threats that call into question the territorial integrity of Armenia,” Grigoryan said.
Along with the recognition of territorial integrity, the key point of the agreement is the establishment of diplomatic relations.
Refusal to Use Force
Even after winning the 2020 war, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev threatened military action if Armenia did not fulfill his conditions. “We will implement the Zangezur Corridor, whether Armenia wants it or not. If it wants, we will solve this issue more easily, if it does not want, we will solve it by force,” Aliyev said.
The text of the peace treaty excludes such threats; the parties promise to refrain from the threat of force.
“Refusing to use force is in the interests of Armenia, since Armenia is weak and its borders are under threat,” Yunus said.
Refusal to Use Force
Many in Armenia consider the withdrawal of existing international lawsuits accusing Azerbaijan of war crimes and the destruction of monuments to be a very serious concession.
Tigran Grigoryan believes that the withdrawal of these lawsuits would be a victory for Baku.
The agreement implies a mutual waiver of existing “interstate claims against each other in any legal instance” and a ban on filing such claims in the future. However, in Azerbaijan, this issue is being discussed in the context of the refusal to demand compensation from Armenia.
Armenian prisoners of war and international guarantees: what was not included in the document
The main obstacle to signing the peace treaty is the precondition put forward by Aliyev: Armenia must first change its constitution. This precondition means that the peace treaty will not be signed this year. Changing the constitution requires a referendum, which is unlikely to take place before mid-2026, and its outcome is impossible to predict.
There are other issues that the agreed text does not address.
“Does this document have international guarantees? What happens if one of the parties violates the agreement? Will this issue reach the UN? Is there any UN Security Council resolution that enshrines this,” asks Tom de Waal, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Center.
The document also does not mention a very sensitive issue for Armenian society: the release of dozens of Armenians, both military and civilian, imprisoned in Baku.
“Not to be a pawn in someone else’s game”
The peace agreement was originally drafted in English with translations into Armenian and Azerbaijani, and no official translation into Russian is planned.
This is in stark contrast to the 2020 ceasefire agreement, which was drafted in Russian and signed by Aliyev, Pashinyan and Putin. Armenian and Azerbaijani political scientists agree that this fact is further evidence of Russia’s declining influence in the region.