The Armenians living in their indigenous lands in a region known as Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh, have long experienced existential insecurity. The fighting today between Azerbaijan, which is backed by Turkey, against Armenia over who belongs in those lands is threatening to escalate into a much bigger regional war and another round of ethnic cleansing.

We spend the hour exploring the causes of this conflict, the human rights implications of the aggression, whether the international legal principles apply, the importance of advancing democracy in the region, and potential resolutions to the war. Hosted by Doug Becker.[ dur: 58mins. ]

* Steve Swerdlow is Associate Professor of the Practice of Human Rights in the Department of Political and International Relations at the University of Southern California. He was Senior Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. He has co-authored reports on violations of freedom of expression and the crackdown of media freedom in Azerbaijan and has conducted human rights field research in the region.

* Anna Ohanyan, Richard B. Finnegan Distinguished Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Stonehill College. She is the editor of Russia Abroad: Driving Regional Fracture in Post-Communist Eurasia and Beyond and author of Networked Regionalism as Conflict Management.

* Hurst Hannum, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is the author of, Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights, and co-author of, International Human Rights: Problems of Law, Policy, and Practice and Negotiating Self-Determination.

This program is produced by the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.