Armenian lawyers have asked the UN's top court to reject a case brought by Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, in which Armenia is accused of ethnic cleansing, the Associated Press and BTA reported.
Azerbaijan launched proceedings at the International Court of Justice in 2021 in the case, less than a week after Armenia filed its own claim against Baku stemming from the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war that killed more than 6,600 people. Last week, Azerbaijan asked the court to dismiss the case filed by Yerevan.
Regarding Azerbaijan's claim, Armenia disputes the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court. The case is based on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, or CERD, which Azerbaijan ratified in 1996. According to Armenia, most of the complaints attached to the suit date back to the first Karabakh war, which ended two years earlier.
"Azerbaijan cannot be allowed to make accusations invoking CERD for almost 30 years and only make them official when many of the eyewitnesses are long gone and the evidence is gone," he told Judge Yegishe Kirakosyan, representative of Armenia.
Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan, but from 1994 until last year it was under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.
After tensions flared in 2020, Azerbaijan gained control of parts of the region, as well as some neighboring territory, as part of a Russian-brokered ceasefire.
In 2023, Azerbaijan waged a blitzkrieg military campaign in Karabakh, causing most of the region's 120,000 residents to flee.
During the 2021 hearings, Azerbaijan told the judges that Armenia had planted numerous landmines in the area and refused to help with demining efforts.
Armenia denies engaging in racial discrimination and says Azerbaijan's claims are false.
Last month, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his country must quickly define its border with Azerbaijan to avoid further hostilities.