On August 8 in Washington, D.C., in a meeting with U.S. President Trump, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed the Joint Declaration on Future Relations, pledging to “chart a bright future not bound by past conflict, consistent with the UN Charter.” The Trump administration and some in the media have hailed the declaration as a “historic peace deal.” In reality, it neither is a treaty nor ends the 37-year Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Rather, it is a political framework that requires international support and attention.
The August 8 declaration calls on the parties to initial the Agreement on Peace and Inter-State Relations, renounce the use of force and claims on disputed territories, delineate shared borders, settle all interstate disputes through appropriate legal channels, establish diplomatic relations, and cooperate in the search for missing persons. It appeals for the closure of the longstanding OSCE Minsk Process, and it promises to open communications, including building a route through Armenia to connect Azerbaijan to its exclave Nakhchivan. Two memoranda signed with the United States anchor the deal in economic incentives: Armenia gains partnerships on border security, energy diversification, and technology; Azerbaijan secures commitments in trade, energy, and digital infrastructure.
Experts in the region have criticized the accord, with one calling it a “monument of mutual fears and distrust.” No doubt its fragility is clear. The framework relies on promises of investments, transit-route security, and new customs regulations, without any national or multilateral institutional guarantees beyond leaders’ words. Moreover, Russia or Iran, both of which have interests in the region, may interpret a U.S.-brokered declaration as a threat and seek to counter it or intervene in the peace process.
At the same time, the countries’ respective domestic politics only deepen the agreement’s fragility. Azerbaijan represses dissent and curbs civil society. It stages sham trials of Armenian detainees and demands constitutional change in Armenia as a condition for signing a peace agreement. At the same time, it ignores the 2023 mass displacement of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and neglects concerns over Armenian cultural heritage under its control.
In Armenia, the widely supported efforts to confront past human rights violations, including those related to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and initiate broad reforms that began in the wake of the 2018 revolution lost steam after the country’s defeat in the conflict in 2020. The momentum for transformative change seems to have waned, leaving state institutions weak and society uncertain ahead of the 2026 parliamentary elections.
Most importantly, the suite of agreements largely excludes measures that address the rights and needs of victims, signaling to other authoritarian leaders that wars can indeed resolve disputes and economic incentives can be used to push aside law, accountability, and justice. The trend of elite-driven negotiations, set since the beginning of the conflict, continues. Excluded from the process, both Armenian and Azerbaijani victims have little recourse for acknowledgment, justice, and repair.
Still, despite its fragility, the declaration offers some promise as a framework for sustainable peace. For the first time, Baku and Yerevan endorsed text drafted in their own capitals, not in or imposed by Brussels, Paris, Moscow, or Washington. Armenia and Azerbaijan have affirmed each other’s sovereignty and made a commitment to peaceful engagement. And while the MoUs emphasize economic ties with Washington rather than with each other, they may serve as a cautious interim step toward cooperation between societies exhausted by decades of war and displacement. Economic cooperation could give both nations room to breathe, rebuild, and engage in dialogue.
Lasting peace, however, requires placing victims’ rights at the center. Though the current framework is thin on accountability and justice, the commitments set out in the declaration, alongside the potential for economic cooperation, open a narrow window of opportunity. While each country must deal with its past, they can seize on the opportunity now by investing in development programs that prioritize victims and their communities and have a reparative approach. In doing so, this fragile framework could serve as the foundation for a broader peace process that could eventually include bi-national truth seeking, shared memorials, and genuine reconciliation.
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PHOTO: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan (right), Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (left), and U.S. President Donald Trump (center) display the signed Joint Declaration on Future Relations on August 9, 2024, in Washington, DC. (U.S. White House)
