The Yerevan Civil Court has rejected a lawsuit by Nagorno-Karabakh’s final president Samvel Shahramanyan, who demanded Armenia’s Education Ministry retract information in a ninth grade history textbook claiming he had signed a decree to dissolve Nagorno-Karabakh. The court ruled that there was a lack of sufficient evidence.
Shahramanyan labelled the information saying that he ‘signed a decree to dissolve’ Nagorno-Karabakh as ‘false and not true’.
The lawsuit was filed in September 2025 against Nzhdeh Hovsepyan, the author of the textbook, and the Armenian Education Ministry, requesting the court oblige both to publicly retract the wording of the phrase.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
Shahramanyan signed a decree ordering the dissolution of Nagorno-Karabakh following its surrender in the face of Azerbaijan’s final offensive in September 2023.
The decree stipulated that the republic would be dissolved by 1 January 2024, and was published by the Nagorno-Karabakh Info Centre, an official government source which is no longer available.
In the lawsuit, Shahramanyan elaborated on the consequences under which the decree was made in September 2023.
Following the final Azerbaijani attack on the region Shahramanyan said Baku had made ‘a direct demand’ that he convene a session of parliament and adopt a declaration on Nagorno-Karabakh’s dissolution under the ‘threat of massacre of the population’.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
However, Shahramanyan said he refused to act, ‘realising the legal, political, and historical consequences of such a step’, and reportedly told the Azerbaijani side that ‘it was impossible to ensure a parliamentary quorum’.
After Azerbaijan insisted, Shahramanyan reportedly ‘proposed replacing the declaration with a decree adopted by him’, taking into account ‘the seriousness of the situation’ and the ‘fact of the blockade’.
In his refutation, Shahramanyan claimed that Nagorno-Karabakh published information on the adoption of the decree, ‘despite not having adopted such a decree’.
For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.
