At a moment when truth is often the first casualty of war, the simple act of telling one’s story clearly becomes a form of survival. That idea was at the heart of a special session held during the Baku Culture and Media Dialogue Platform, a gathering designed to bring together journalists, thinkers, diplomats, and cultural voices from across the world. Hikmet Hajiyev, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan and Head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration, spoke in a session called “The Language of Peace and Combating Disinformation.” His words were not abstract. They came from a nation that has lived through decades of occupation, displacement, and the quiet erosion of its image in global media. When he said that Azerbaijan had formulated its own strategic agenda over thirty years of occupation, he was not speaking about a bureaucratic plan. He was describing a survival instinct—a way to fight not only with arms and diplomacy, but with words, narratives, and the stubborn insistence that truth must be stronger than falsehood. For many in the audience, it might have sounded like a policy statement. For anyone who understands the history of the South Caucasus, it was something deeper: a testimony of endurance, memory, and the courage to speak when the world kept silent or, worse, repeated lies.
The nearly thirty years during which Azerbaijani territories were under occupation are not just a political footnote. They are a human story of hundreds of thousands of people forced from their homes, of ancient villages left ruined, of families who could not return to the graves of their parents. In that long, painful period, Azerbaijan discovered something crucial: the battlefield was not only physical but informational. As Hajiyev explained, the country had to create its own ways to respond to disinformation and propaganda campaigns directed against it. There was no luxury of waiting for international journalism to rediscover the facts. No one was going to tell Azerbaijan’s story with the tenderness and precision it deserved. So, from the wreckage of war and displacement, the country began to build a strategic agenda—a coordinated effort involving state institutions, diplomats, media professionals, civil society, and ordinary citizens who learned to recognize lies and speak up for their own truth. This was not a slogan. It was a daily practice. It meant preparing diplomats to answer hostile interviewers, training journalists to verify facts, creating platforms where independent voices could meet, and developing tools to expose manipulation. It also meant recognizing that propaganda is not innocent. Disinformation is not simply a different opinion—it is a weapon. And against a weapon, one needs defense, resilience, and above all, an unshakable belief that reality cannot be negotiated away.
Perhaps the most striking part of Hajiyev’s speech was his reference to a recent publication by CNN. He called it “highly dangerous information” that could undermine relations in the region. In one sentence, he exposed how fragile the line is between careless reporting and real-world damage. A major international outlet may publish a story without full context, or with a single misleading line, and suddenly the work of years—ceasefires, confidence-building measures, humanitarian negotiations—begins to crack. It is easy to imagine the scene inside the session room when Hajiyev spoke. He was not showing anger; he was showing evidence. He wanted the audience to understand that disinformation has moved far beyond the realm of online trolls and cheap propaganda leaflets. Today, it can wear the mask of credible journalism. It can come from a famous network, spread through the most trusted platforms, and find its way into the minds of policymakers in capitals thousands of miles away. He emphasized that not only journalists and professional media outlets, but also diplomats, became targets of this disinformation. This is an important point. A diplomat is someone who works with the most fragile material in the world—trust. Trust takes years to build and seconds to destroy. When a false story portrays a country as aggressive, or when it misrepresents the history of a conflict, the diplomat immediately becomes the first casualty. They are the ones who must answer questions in Geneva, New York, or Brussels, trying gently to correct the record without appearing defensive. They are the ones who know that even if the lie is later retracted, the suspicion it creates will linger like smoke in a closed room. Hajiyev’s warning about CNN was not meant to humiliate a news organization. It was meant to say: be careful. The river of words can quench thirsty lands, but it can also flood and drown them.
The title of the session, “The Language of Peace and Combating Disinformation,” points to an important distinction. The opposite of disinformation is not necessarily more information. It is not louder propaganda. It is a careful, sustainable language of peace. To speak the language of peace means to refuse the temptation of dehumanizing the other side. It means rejecting the quick gratification of blaming all problems on an outside enemy. But it also means being absolutely clear about facts, about history, about the pain of victims. Throughout the years of occupation, Azerbaijan learned that silence was dangerous. If you do not tell your own story, someone else will tell it for you—and they will tell it badly. So the strategic agenda under occupation was not just about defending the country; it was about constructing an alternative narrative built on international law, on justice, and on the deep historical roots of the Azerbaijani people in their own land. But the language of peace cannot be crafted only in wartime. It requires practice in peacetime. It requires journalists who are trained to distinguish between patriotic storytelling and manipulative information. It requires diplomats who can communicate with compassion and precision. It requires citizens who are media literate enough not to be fooled by videos taken out of context, photos from unknown sources, or anonymous accounts designed to stir anger. This is why the Baku Culture and Media Dialogue Platform matters. It creates a space where such conversations can happen face to face—where a presidential aide can sit in the same room with journalists and explain not only what happened, but why it matters. It is a room where the language of peace is not spoken in abstractions but in examples, questions, shared doubts, and occasional agreement.
Looking beyond Azerbaijan, the lessons of this session resonate far beyond the South Caucasus. Between 20 and 30 years is enough time for any nation to understand how information warfare works. It is enough time to see how lies about history can grow into myths, how false news can become accepted wisdom simply because it is repeated often enough. That is why Azerbaijan’s experience is now a useful reference for other countries emerging from conflict. The same disinformation techniques seen in the Karabakh context are now used in other regions of the world: fake social media accounts, edited videos, misleading headlines, manipulated images, and the deliberate mixing of facts with opinions to create confusion. The fight against these techniques requires solidarity among countries and journalists who believe in responsible media. It also requires stronger international mechanisms, both ethical and legal, to ensure that publications harmful to peace can be challenged not just through official statements but through transparent fact-checking and community pressure. Perhaps most of all, it requires a redefinition of the role of the diplomat. In the past, a diplomat was someone who negotiated treaties, exchanged notes, and hosted receptions. Today, a diplomat must also be a communicator, a fact-checker, and a guardian of narrative. As Hajiyev said, diplomats have become targets of disinformation. That means they must also become its opponents—engaging with media, correcting falsehoods, and explaining their country’s position to global audiences with both firmness and gentleness. This is not an easy task. It requires extensive knowledge, emotional intelligence, and the capacity to remain calm when others are trying to provoke you. But it is essential for any country that wants to break the cycle of hatred and mistrust.
At its core, the fight against disinformation is not about politics or media systems. It is about human beings. Behind every fake story, there is a real person who may fear for their life. Behind every manipulated video, there is a community that may suffer from new hatred. When Azerbaijan speaks about the thirty years of occupation and the disinformation campaigns that accompanied it, it is speaking about families who lost their homes and then lost the right to be heard. That double loss—first the loss of land and then the loss of their story—is felt deeply by millions of people. It is what drives the strategic agenda that Hajiyev described. It is also what makes the language of peace so necessary. The language of peace is not a weak language. It does not avoid difficult truths. Instead, it insists on telling those truths with the intention of healing, not of wounding. It refuses to turn victims into statistics or historical conflicts into entertainment. It demands that when a major channel publishes a story, it takes a moment to think about the consequences: what if this line is wrong? What if this image is misleading? What if this narrative harms the possibility of peace? The Baku session was not a lecture. It was an invitation—to journalists, diplomats, and ordinary people—to consider the weight of the words they use. In a region that has survived occupation and conflict, every word matters. And as the world becomes ever more connected, and ever more vulnerable to disinformation, the message from Baku deserves to be heard: if we want peace, we must speak its language. We must protect truth as we would protect a fragile peace, because in the end, they are the same thing.