@article{article_1786951, title={Legal Assessment of Allegations of Child Soldier Use in Armenia’s Second Karabakh War}, journal={Review of Armenian Studies}, year={2025}, author={Altınsoy, Zeynep Deniz}, keywords={Child Soldiers, Armenia, Second Karabakh War, Human Rights, Law of Armed Conflict}, abstract={During the Second Karabakh War (September 27 - November 10, 2020), Azerbaijani authorities accused Armenia of deploying child soldiers in the conflict. However, current international reports do not substantiate these claims. UNICEF, other UN bodies, and major human rights organizations (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch) have documented multiple serious violations during the hostilities, notably the targeting of civilian settlements, indiscriminate shelling, and use of prohibited munitions, yet none have confirmed the use of child soldiers. Armenia, in official communications to the UN Secretary-General, rejected Azerbaijan’s allegations as “groundless.”
Legally, Article 8(2)(d)(vii) of the Rome Statute classifies the involvement of children under 15 in armed conflict, whether direct or indirect, as a war crime. Armenia is not a State Party to the Rome Statute, which means the International Criminal Court lacks direct jurisdiction. Nevertheless, other mechanisms such as the UN Human Rights Council or the European Court of Human Rights could, in theory, investigate such allegations. Currently, the lack of independently corroborated and institutionally credible evidence precludes the formal attribution of legal accountability under international law. For such claims to acquire juridical validity, they must be supported by systematically collected visual or audio-visual documentation, corroborated witness statements, and authenticated official records—each subjected to rigorous scrutiny by impartial and qualified experts. In the absence of this evidentiary process, the allegations remain situated within the domain of political narrative and do not give rise to enforceable legal obligations or consequences.}, number={52}, publisher={Terazi Yayıncılık}