Armenia — Azerbaijan

Summary

Armenia and Azerbaijan have contested territory continuously since 1988. The Karabakh chapter closed in September 2023, when Azerbaijan took the territory and its Armenian population left; what remains is an interstate boundary question. Both states have agreed to delimit on the basis of the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration and the maps then in force, and a first section of roughly a dozen kilometres in the Tavush direction was delimited in 2024, involving the transfer of four villages to Azerbaijani control. The text of a peace treaty was agreed in March 2025 and has not been signed; Azerbaijan conditions signature on Armenian constitutional amendment. In August 2026 Pashinyan stated publicly that on the agreed Alma-Ata basis Artsvashen is Armenian and Kyarki (Tigranashen), Barkhudarlu and Yukhari Askipara are not — the first time an Armenian government had spelled out what its own agreed method implies for the enclaves. Nothing has been transferred and no delimitation decision has been taken on them.

Why it matters

This is the relationship the module's principal diplomatic file exists to settle, and the one place where the difference between an agreed method and a settled border is visible in kilometres. Tigranashen sits on Armenia's main north–south interstate road, so the enclave question is not symbolic: applying the agreed baseline to it would move a road Armenia depends on.

Agreements

• Alma-Ata Declaration — the agreed delimitation baseline · signed 1991-12

  Not a bilateral instrument, and cited here for the use both states have agreed to make of it: delimitation on the basis of the declaration and the Soviet administrative maps then in force.

• Agreed peace treaty text · signed 2025-03

  Agreed, not signed. The text has not been published, and Azerbaijan conditions signature on Armenian constitutional amendment.

Related events

• Azerbaijani offensive takes Karabakh 19 – 20 Sep 2023

  Military · Territorial change

• First border section delimited — the Tavush transfer Apr – May 2024

  Territorial change · Diplomatic

• Armenia and Azerbaijan conclude a draft peace text 13 Mar 2025

  Diplomatic

• Pashinyan applies the Alma-Ata baseline to the enclaves, and Armenian politics reacts 20 – 21 August 2026

  Political · Territorial change

What remains unknown

• The peace text agreed in March 2025 has not been published, so its treatment of the boundary is described from the parties' characterisations rather than from the document.
• Delimitation has covered a small fraction of the boundary. The length and course of the remainder are not publicly fixed, and neither party publishes a map of what it considers agreed.
• No decision has been taken on any of the four enclaves named in August 2026, and neither government has stated a timetable for one.

Readings the evidence also supports

• Azerbaijan's pacing of the process can be read as a genuine constitutional concern about a claim it says Armenia's basic law still carries, or as the use of an unmeetable condition to keep a favourable status quo open. The public record supports both readings and settles neither.

Listed because the record's own assessment is not the only one its sources permit — not as a hedge on the assessment above.