Recently, the 18th Francophonie Summit has taken place in Tunisia. It is an international organization of francophone countries with 54 members, 7 associate members representing states and governments, and 27 observer members. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan delivered a speech to the forum participants. Armenia is included in this association. Pashinyan’s speech, of course, was in line with the Armenian agenda, which was aimed at preventing the achievement of a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Pashinyan told the participants of the international event about the ‘terrible’ situation on the conditional Armenian-Azerbaijani border due to Baku’s ‘aggressive intentions.’
Also, On November 18, 2022, during the ministerial meeting within the ongoing Summit of the International Organization of the Francophonie in Djerba, Tunisia, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan made a provocative statement full of distortions regarding the alleged anti-Azerbaijan positions by members of the Organization.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said that during the preparations for the Djerba Summit, with the direct support of France, one-sided, biased and distorted provocative provisions against Azerbaijan were included to the initial texts of the final documents of the Summit, namely the Djerba Declaration, and the draft resolution dedicated to crisis situations in the Francophone area, and were presented to the member states for discussion.
“However, as a result of the intervention of several member states during the discussion of the draft documents, the said provisions against our country were removed from the texts, and any wording directly targeting Azerbaijan were prevented in the drafts. Nevertheless, there are still certain elements in the final draft of the document that do not belong to the Organization’s mandate, and provides a possibility of incitement of the political propaganda tools of Armenia,” reads the statement.
“In the framework of document agreement process, additional political pressures and deterrence steps contrary to diplomatic practice were taken by France against the countries that objected to unilateral, biased and distorted provisions against Azerbaijan. Despite these pressures, during the Ministerial meeting of the International Organization of the Francophonie held on November 18, 2022, some member states once again took the floor and declared that they objected to the relevant clauses of the draft resolution and did not agree to the adoption of the document.
Still, it was reported that the draft document was approved for submission to the Summit, ignoring the objections, violating the decision-making procedures and disregarding the positions of the member states. At that point, the representatives protesting the decision left the conference hall.”
“It should be noted that taking of such steps, which are unprecedented in international multilateral platforms, and the gross violation of procedural rules have once again demonstrated that the International Organization of the Francophonie is a political tool of France to put pressure on other countries, and this, undoubtedly will bring a serious damage to its reputation as an institution with a cultural profile,” the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry noted.
“As a result of such disruptive activity of France, we consider the documents to be adopted at the Summit of the Francophone member states to be politically biased and irrelevant.
Azerbaijani side expresses its gratitude to all the states that have demonstrated a position based on the norms and principles of international law in the document discussion process of the Summit.”
It seems that at this summit the problems of French-speaking countries were left aside, and some participants sympathized with Armenia.
Faktyoxla Lab has tried to figure out how Armenia ended up in this organization, and why the OIF, without understanding the essence of the problem, supported Yerevan.
To begin with, according to open sources, the OIF provides support to its 88 states and governments in the development or consolidation of their policies, international policies and actions for multilateral cooperation in accordance with four main tasks:
- To promote the French language and cultural and linguistic diversity;
- To promote peace, democracy and human rights;
- To support education, training, higher education and research;
- To foster economic cooperation to bolster sustainable development.
The main criterion for joining the organization is not the degree of knowledge of the French language of the population of a particular state (although this is welcome), but the presence of cultural ties with France that have developed over decades and even centuries. For example, Armenia is a member of this organization, while Ukraine and the Baltic countries are observers.
According to official data, there are Russian-language classes in 43 secondary schools in Armenia, 18 of them are in Yerevan. In addition, 63 schools with in-depth study of the Russian language operate on the territory of this country.
Since 2012, in-depth study of the French language has been carried out in 10 schools in Armenia, and thanks to the expansion of the program, 6 more schools and one college will add to this list. According to official statistics, English is taught in 76% of Armenian schools, secondary and higher educational institutions, French in 14%, and German in 10%.
Thus, the degree of knowledge of the French language of the population of Armenia is negligible. Armenia has nothing to do with the French-speaking area, the French language is not widespread in it and is little studied.
On the other hand, one duet from the Francophonie countries stands out in particular - Armenia and France. Both of them expect not only to talk about their bilateral ties, but also to make progress in solving foreign policy problems. The extremely active Armenian diaspora in France plays a central role in strengthening their ties.
It is known that the large-scale nature of the migration of Armenians to France acquired only in the 20th century - from Russia and the Ottoman Empire after the First World War and revolutions, and then in the 1960s-1970s from the Middle East.
At present, it is very difficult to accurately calculate the size of the diaspora, but approximate data periodically appear in the press about 500,000-600,000 people (the largest figure in Europe) who have their own public organizations, churches, media, etc. Apparently, the Diaspora has done a lot to ensure that relations between Paris and Yerevan develop at all levels.
This is not the first time that Armenia uses Francophonie for its ‘filthy political purposes.’
Back in 2018, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan issued a statement.
“The presentation of the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan at the Pavilion of Armenia in the “Village de la Francophonie”, opened in Yerevan on October 9 of this year as part of the 17th Summit of the Francophonie Organization in Armenia is another provocative step of Armenia serving its occupation policy. This step clearly demonstrates that Armenia is using the Organization of La Francophonie for its political purposes,” the ministry noted.
“We would like to emphasize that these acts of Armenia that committed military aggression and occupation against Azerbaijan grossly violate the norms and principles of international law, the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act and at the same time contradict with the Charter of the Organization of La Francophonie, the goals and objectives of the Organization.
The Armenia's attempts to politicize the agenda of the Organization of La Francophonie are vivid evidence of its intentions to camouflage the occupation and aggression policy of this country, as well as to undermine the efforts for peaceful settlement of the conflict made by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, including France, which is the initiator of the Organization of La Francophonie.”
Interestingly, the OIF is purely humanitarian and humanistic in nature, and in principle, has nothing to do with politics. It is based on such values as peace, human rights and freedoms. Based on this, Armenia, by all indications, could not be accepted as a member of the organization at all.
In a word, the Armenian side every time tries to politicize the humanitarian event and put in the final document some formulations that contradict the interests of Azerbaijan.
Armenia is acting like an orphan who wants to be picked up. This country, by and large, is not needed by anyone. Armenia doesn’t know how to make friends, more precisely, it knows how to make friends only against someone. And how many people want to be friends with Yerevan against Baku?
