Armenian Government Publishes Full Archive of Nagorno-Karabakh Negotiation Documents

The Armenian government has released a large collection of documents that show how the negotiation process around the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict developed from the 1990s until 2020. The files were posted on the official government website gov.am and include proposals, draft agreements, negotiation notes, and publicly known international statements that shaped the diplomatic history of the conflict.

According to the government, the uploaded materials come from several state institutions involved in the negotiation process over the years. These documents give a detailed picture of how international mediators and Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders discussed borders, status, security, return of displaced people, and the structure of future peacekeeping missions. Many of these papers were internal and had not been available to the public before. The government also included a number of already public texts that are directly connected to these internal materials.

The publication follows a promise made by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who said the negotiation papers would be released after the OSCE officially ended the Minsk Group process. On December 1, the OSCE confirmed that the Minsk process and all bodies associated with it were formally closed. This decision was the end of more than three decades of international mediation.

Pashinyan first announced the plan to publish the documents shortly after former presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan gave interviews criticizing the current government’s handling of the issue. In response, Pashinyan argued that the full collection of documents would show the real content of the negotiations that took place under different Armenian governments.

He stated that all past negotiation proposals were aimed at “թոկը կարճացնելու մասին (short leash)” and added that when the documents become available, this approach will “become more visible.” According to Pashinyan, the same logic applied to all international proposals that Armenia received to “stop the war.”

A Look at What Was Published

The released material includes more than two decades of proposals and frameworks, such as:

• Early OSCE plans and ceasefire-related drafts from the 1990s

• The 1999 Meghri–Karabakh land-swap draft agreement, which involved territorial exchanges and new transport arrangements

• The 2007 Madrid Principles, which introduced the concept of an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh and a future referendum

• The 2011 Updated Madrid Principles, which detailed a phased withdrawal from surrounding territories, international peacekeepers, and legally binding expressions of will

• Negotiation reports, clarifications, and diplomatic texts explaining how mediators balanced issues of territorial integrity and self-determination

• Statements from the United States, Russia, France, the European Union, and Turkey that showed how international actors viewed possible settlements

These documents present the evolution of international ideas on how to resolve the conflict, from land-swap concepts in the 1990s to multi-stage peace plans in the 2000s and early 2010s. They also show the positions of different Armenian governments and how proposed solutions changed over time.

The publication is the first time Armenia has made its entire negotiation archive available for public review. For many years, most of the details of the peace process were known only through occasional leaks or short public statements by mediators. Now, Armenian citizens, researchers, and journalists can examine the full context behind the diplomatic efforts that shaped the conflict for decades.

The decision also comes at a time when public debate about Armenia’s diplomatic history has grown more intense. By opening access to the full archive, the government aims to show how the negotiation process developed step by step, what options were discussed, and how different proposals connected to each other.

With the OSCE Minsk process now officially closed, Armenia’s publication of these documents opens a new phase in understanding the conflict’s diplomatic history and the foundations of the proposals that were discussed before the 2020 war and the later developments that reshaped the region.

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