The Lachin Corridor is a genocide prevention corridor. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced this Monday in his opening remarks at the 4th Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide being held in the capital Yerevan.

"It is necessary to emphasize the [Azerbaijani] provocations that are taking place in the Lachin Corridor. Some try to parallel the Lachin Corridor with other communications existing in the region or possible communications to be built. But the Lachin Corridor is a genocide prevention corridor. To close that corridor, to stop the activity of that corridor, means to condemn the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh [(Artsakh)] to genocide [by Azerbaijan] in three different scenarios," said Pashinyan.

The first scenario, according to him, can be the depopulation of Artsakh Armenians when they simply will not have the opportunity to live in their homes, on their land, which, according to Pashinyan, we can see in Artsakh’s Hadrut region where no Armenians live anymore after the 44th day in 2020.

He recalled that the November 9, 2020 trilateral statement envisages the return of refugees to Nagorno-Karabakh and neighboring regions, but the UN workers on refugees have not entered that area to this day.

The next scenario, according to Pashinyan, is the loss of identity, which is clearly evidenced by Azerbaijan's fight against Artsakh’s Armenian place names as well as historical and cultural monuments.

"The purpose of that fight is to demonstrate that Armenians have no right to live in Nagorno-Karabakh. At the [Azerbaijani] state level, an order is given to erase Armenian wall inscriptions and replace them with inscriptions recording the ‘real’ historical realities. It is very difficult to describe this as anything other than a preparation [by Azerbaijan] for [Armenian] genocide [in Artsakh], or at least a policy with such a tendency.

And the third scenario is the actual physical destruction, the signs of which we have seen and are still seeing today," said the Armenian PM.