OSCE Minsk Group

The OSCE Minsk Group was established in 1992 by what was then the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE, renamed OSCE in 1995) to provide a framework for negotiating an end to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. It took its name from a planned peace conference in Minsk, Belarus, which never actually convened.

Since 1997 the Minsk Group has been led by three Co-Chairs: France, the Russian Federation, and the United States. Other participating states have included Belarus, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Co-Chair format gave the group an unusual structure for the OSCE, combining three permanent members of the UN Security Council as joint mediators.

The Group's central diplomatic output was the so-called Basic Principles (also known as the Madrid Principles, first presented in 2007 and updated in 2009), which proposed a phased settlement including return of territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control, an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh, a corridor linking Armenia to the region, a future determination of final legal status through a legally binding expression of will, the right of return for displaced persons, and international security guarantees including a peacekeeping operation.

The Group convened numerous rounds of talks between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders but did not produce a comprehensive settlement. Its relevance was sharply diminished after the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, which ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire on 9–10 November 2020 negotiated outside the Minsk Group format. Following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, cooperation among the Co-Chairs effectively collapsed. In 2022 Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev publicly declared the Minsk Group defunct, and after Azerbaijan's September 2023 military operation and the subsequent dissolution of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh authorities, the Group ceased to play any meaningful mediating role.