Azerbaijan is pushing the court in The Hague to proceed with the case against Armenia

Azerbaijan has asked the International Court of Justice to proceed with a case accusing Armenia of waging a campaign of ethnic cleansingreports “Reuters”.

It is one of two competing cases launched by the warring parties during decades of ethnic conflict.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have sought rulings at the International Court of Justice against each other over the effects of conflicts dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, mainly over Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan and once home to many Armenians.

Ethnic Armenians won a war in the 1990s that saw hundreds of thousands of Azeris flee their homes in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. The situation has largely reversed since 2020, with Azerbaijan regaining control of the disputed region with military victories and thousands of Armenians fled from there.

Yesterday, Armenia asked the International Court of Justice to dismiss the case filed by Azerbaijan on technical grounds, following a request a week earlier by Azerbaijan to dismiss the case filed by Armenia. Final rulings in both cases may be years away, and the court has no way to enforce its rulings.

Azerbaijan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mamedov told the judges that Armenia’s objections to the Court’s jurisdiction must be rejected.

Armenia first brought its case to the International Court of Justice 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 .

In turn, Azerbaijan also filed a lawsuit against Yerevan a week later, arguing that Armenia had carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing from the early 1990s to 2020.

Both sides mutually deny the allegations.

For now, the hearings cover only legal challenges to the ICJ’s jurisdiction and will not go into the merits of discrimination claims.