Geneva §

Humanitarian law and negotiation venue

Geneva is associated with humanitarian law, the International Committee of the Red Cross and repeated diplomatic formats. In the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, Geneva matters most through the language and practice of civilian protection: prisoners, missing persons, medical evacuation, humanitarian access and the duties of belligerents.

During the Lachin blockade, the ICRC was one of the few international organisations still able to move limited numbers of patients and supplies, although its access was repeatedly constrained. The gap between humanitarian access on paper and civilian need on the ground became one of the defining features of the siege. ICRC statements document that narrowing space.

Geneva is therefore the atlas's shorthand for the humanitarian layer of the conflict. It asks not who owns the land first, but who can reach the sick, identify the dead, visit detainees and keep civilians alive. editorial