The Center for Truth and Justice (CFTJ) is a non-profit organization founded by a group of Southern California lawyers after the 44-day Artsakh war of 2020. Given the importance of evidence in civil and criminal litigation in the US legal system, the CTFJ was created to find substantive evidence of Azerbaijan’s war crimes in order to pursue international legal redress on some level.
In August 2022, The CFTJ was represented by the principal lawyer of Hitik Law, Talin Hitik, in Geneva.
The CFTJ enlisted local law students in Armenia to collect first-hand testimonial evidence from war survivors via in-depth, recorded interviews. The US-based lawyers trained 100 Armenia-based law students and lawyers to carry out this task. As a result of this Diaspora-Homeland synergy, CFTJ managed to collect the recorded testimonies of numerous soldiers, former POWs, private citizens who lost loved ones, homes, or property, and other eyewitnesses.
In August 2022, the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which is tasked with monitoring implementation of the treaty, conducted its periodic review of Azerbaijan. As part of the review process, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations, such as nonprofits and human rights organizations) are invited to submit reports to CERD. One of the NGOs that was granted the right to do this was CTFJ.
Since none of CTFJ’s members specialize in international law, they sought the assistance of Talin Hitik, an active member of the Armenian community who has specialized experience in the area, who advised CTFJ on matters of international law. T. Hitik started talking advising about how to use the evidence, what types of cases could be files, etc.