A complaint was submitted to the UN, revealing the conflict of interests of a member of the UN working group in the cases of Armenian prisoners

Armenian and international human rights organizations have submitted an official complaint to the UN, revealing the conflict of interest of a member of the UN working group in the cases of Armenian prisoners.

The coalition of Armenian and international human rights organizations, led by the Artsakh Union, submitted a comprehensive complaint-report to the United Nations (UN), demanding an immediate investigation against Ganna Yudkivskaya, a member of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD). The report details serious and undisclosed conflicts of interest that overshadow and endanger his participation in the adoption of the opinion No. 46/2024 of the State Security Council on the detention of the Armenian figure and philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan by the Republic of Azerbaijan.

The official complaint, addressed to the CSCE, the Special Procedures Coordinating Committee and the President of the UN Human Rights Council, outlines a troubling chain of financial, political and personal ties linking Ms. Yudkivskaya to the government of Azerbaijan, as well as a past history of ethics violations.

According to extensive evidence presented in the report, Ms. Yudkivskaya’s involvement in the Vardanyan case violates a number of UN regulations, including the Code of Conduct for Special Procedures Mandate Holders. The main conflicts of interest presented by the coalition include the following:

• Direct financial ties with Azerbaijan. Ms. Yudkivskaya is an active partner of the Ukrainian law firm Equity Law Firm, which provides fee-based legal services to the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), the country’s leading state-owned enterprise.
• Political and personal bias. Her husband, former Ukrainian politician Giorgi Logvinsky, maintains direct ties to Azerbaijan and has publicly supported Azerbaijan’s territorial ambitions over Nagorno-Karabakh, the same political dispute that underlies Ruben Vardanyan’s arbitrary arrest and continued detention.
• History of ethical violations. The report highlights previous controversies during Ms. Yudkivskaya’s tenure as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), including rulings in favor of organizations with which she was previously associated, politicized opinions in favor of Azerbaijan, and the use of her judicial immunity to shield her husband from an active anti-corruption arrest warrant issued by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). for
• Double standards in the practice of self-denial. Ms. Yudkivskaya always recuses herself from cases related to the Russian Federation, based on her Ukrainian citizenship and her financial interests in a company dealing with compensation for war damages caused by Russia. Despite Ruben Vardanyan’s 50-year history as a prominent Russian citizen, and Azerbaijan’s own public claims that Vardanyan is a “Russian envoy”, Ms. Yudkivskaya deliberately chose not to recuse herself in his case.

“The impartiality of the human rights mechanisms of the UN is completely based on the absolute independence, transparency and impartiality of its mandate holders,” said Artsakh Union President Artak Beglaryan. “Irrefutable evidence of Mrs. Yudkivskaya’s financial and political ties to Azerbaijan fundamentally jeopardizes the latest opinion of the State Security Council on Ruben Vardanyan and possible opinions on other Armenian prisoners. A mandate holder financially connected to the respondent state cannot impartially investigate a case involving a political prisoner of that state. We demand immediate accountability and a new, impartial review of this case.”

In light of these findings, the coalition urgently requests the United Nations to:

1. Initiate an immediate supervisory review (investigation) of Ms. Yudkivskaya’s violations of the UN Code of Conduct.
2. To oblige Ms. Yudkivskaya to recuse herself from all future cases of the State Security Council related to the Republic of Azerbaijan.
3. To annul the opinion No. 46/2024 and adopt a new, impartial opinion regarding the case of Ruben Vardanyan against the Republic of Azerbaijan, in order to preserve the impartiality of the procedures of the SCCC.

The complaint is based on a preliminary open-source investigation conducted by former International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo in late 2025, as well as materials from the Center for Truth and Justice.

The full complaint-report of the coalition is available here:

The coalition signing this urgent report represents a diverse group of Armenian and international human rights organizations dedicated to international justice, the prevention of atrocities, and the protection of the rights of the forcibly displaced people of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

Signatories:

• “Artsakh Union” (Artak Beglaryan, president)
• Center for International and Comparative Law (Siranush Sahakyan, Director)
• Armenian Legal Defense Front (Garnik Kerkonyan, President)
• Christian Solidarity International (John Eibner, President)
• Human Rights Defender of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Republic (Gegham Stepanyan)
• “Against Legal Arbitrariness” Foundation (Larisa Alaverdyan, Executive Director)