Azerbaijan calls for ICJ to throw out Armenian ethnic cleansing case

The case accuses Azerbaijan of glorifying racism and allowing hate speech against Armenians.

Azerbaijan has called for the UN’s International Court of Justice to throw out a case accusing it of ethnic cleansing brought by its neighbour and rival Armenia.

Lawyers for Azerbaijan argued on Monday that the case does not meet the conditions of the United Nations anti-discrimination treaty on which it is based. They also claimed that the ICJ does not have the jurisdiction to rule on the issues contained in the complaint.

The two Caucasian countries have been contesting the Nagorno-Karabakh territory during the three decades since the Soviet Union collapsed. Yerevan has sought to bring international attention to the mountainous enclave since Baku took control in a military operation in September.

The ICJ case, filed by Armenia in 2021, accuses Azerbaijan of glorifying racism against and allowing hate speech against Armenians and destroying Armenian cultural sites. Baku has denied all the claims.

The case stems from a 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh that left more than 6,600 people dead, one of three full-scale conflicts that the pair have fought over the issue.

The UN convention on stamping out racial discrimination has a clause allowing disputes to be resolved by the ICJ should bilateral talks fail to broker a settlement.

Azerbaijan’s representative Elnur Mammadov claimed to the court that Armenia had failed to “engage in negotiations with Azerbaijan in an attempt to settle” the issue and that the lawsuit was therefore “premature”.

There were “limited negotiations” but Yerevan “failed to pursue them”, Mammadov said. “From the outset, Armenia had its sights firmly set on commencing these proceedings before the court … and