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Armenia and Azerbaijan have each sought rulings at the ICJ, also
known as the World Court, against the other over the fallout of
conflicts dating to the breakup of the Soviet Union, mainly over
Nagorno-Karabakh, a part of Azerbaijan once home to many
Armenians.
Ethnic Armenians won a war in the 1990s that saw hundreds of
thousands of Azeris flee homes in and around Karabakh. The
situation has largely reversed since 2020, with Azerbaijan
recapturing control of Karabakh in military victories and
thousands of Armenians fleeing.
On Monday Armenia asked the ICJ to throw out the case brought
Azerbaijan on technical grounds, following a request a week
earlier by Azerbaijan to dismiss the case brought by Armenia.
Final rulings in either case could be years away, and the court
has no way to enforce its rulings.
Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov on Tuesday
told judges Armenia's objections to the court's jurisdiction
should be dismissed.
Armenia first filed its case at the ICJ in 2021, accusing
Azerbaijan of glorifying racism against Armenians, allowing hate
speech against them and destroying Armenian cultural sites, in
violation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Azerbaijan brought its own case against Yerevan a week later,
alleging that Armenia had carried out a campaign of ethnic
cleansing from the early 1990s until 2020.
Both sides deny the other's accusations.
Hearings for now cover only legal objections to the jurisdiction
of the ICJ and will not go into the merits of the discrimination
claims.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Peter Graff)
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