From Monday, Armenia and Azerbaijan will expose a long-standing dispute over
“ethnic cleansing”
before the highest court of the United Nations , even as military tensions intensify between these two neighboring countries and rivals of the Caucasus.
Lawyers from both sides begin two weeks of hearings to argue their interpretations of international law in the Peace Palace of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Earlier this month, the two sides accused each other of opening fire along their shared border, dampening hopes of reaching a lasting peace deal after decades of sporadic fighting.
The legal battle before the ICJ dates back to September 2021, when the two countries filed complaints against each other within the space of a week. The two neighbors accuse each other of
“ethnic cleansing”
and violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
The ICJ, which adjudicates disputes between states, issued emergency orders in December 2021, calling on both sides to prevent the incitement and promotion of racial hatred. But while the ICJ's decisions are binding, it has no means of enforcing them and tensions have increased, culminating in Azerbaijan's blitzkrieg offensive last September in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku retook it during this one-day military operation, which pushed the entire Armenian population of the enclave, more than 100,000 of the 120,000 inhabitants, to flee to Armenia.
Agreement at hand
A few weeks later, Armenia petitioned the ICJ again, asking the court to order Azerbaijan to withdraw its troops from Karabakh and allow Armenian refugees to return home safely. In November, the Court ordered Azerbaijan to allow anyone wishing to return to Karabakh to do so
“safely, without hindrance and as soon as possible.”
The hearings, which begin Monday, are scheduled to continue until April 26. They relate to objections raised by each side in the initial case filed by the opposing side in September 2021. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said a comprehensive peace deal was within reach after last year's offensive in Karabakh.
The former Soviet republics fought two wars for control of this mountainous region, which claimed thousands of lives on both sides and caused hundreds of thousands to flee: one in the 1990s, during the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the most recent in 2020.
The conflict has also strained ties between Russia and Armenia, with Yerevan saying Moscow did not do enough to help it when it was attacked. In February, Armenia officially joined the International Criminal Court (ICC), despite warnings from Moscow. She is now required to arrest Vladimir Putin if he sets foot on Armenian territory, under an ICC arrest warrant issued against the Russian president in March 2023.