Conflicts of interest mar UN decision on Azerbaijan’s Armenian hostages

Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian leader from Nagorno Karabakh, is being held hostage by Azerbaijan.

CSI has joined a coalition of human rights groups in a complaint to UN bodies about a conflict of interest on the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – a conflict of interest that may have led the Working Group to rule against Ruben Vardanyan, one of the 20 Armenian hostages held by Azerbaijan.

The complaint published on Friday reveals that a key member of the Working Group, Ganna Yukivska, has serious undisclosed financial and political ties to Azerbaijan:

• She is a partner at a law firm employed by SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company.
• She is married to a Ukrainian politician who has publicly supported Azerbaijan’s position on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
• As a judge on the European Court of Human Rights, she issued rulings favorable to Azerbaijan and to organizations she was connected to, and tried to use her judicial immunity to shield her husband from corruption charges in Ukraine.

Vardanyan, 57, served as the Minister of State for the Republic of Artsakh in 2022-2023. When Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh in September 2023 and ethnically cleansed it of its ancient Armenian Christian population, its forces kidnapped Vardanyan and a number of other Armenian leaders and civilians.

In 2025, Vardanyan was subjected to a show trial in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, in which he was denied access to his counsel and the right to review the evidence against him. He sentenced to 20 years in prison in February 2026.

In February 2025, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published its opinion No. 2024/46, stating that Vardanyan’s imprisonment was “not a case of arbitrary detention.”

As one legal expert wrote, the opinion was “shocking, as even a cursory reading shows that it reproduces, almost verbatim, the response submitted to WGAD by the government of Azerbaijan.”

In March 2025, CSI hosted a side event about Azerbaijan’s Armenian hostages at the UN Human Rights Council. At that event, the expert panelists already raised serious concerns about the Working Group’s opinion.

CSI, the Artsakh Union, and the other groups that signed the complaint are calling for:

• An investigation into M. Yukivska’s conduct.
• The mandatory recusal of M. Yukivska from all future decisions involving Azerbaijan.
• The quashing of opinion No. 2024/26, and the adoption of a new opinion about Ruben Vardanyan’s case.

The full text of the complaint can be found below: