THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Armenia insisted Tuesday that the highest United Nations court docket has jurisdiction to listen to its case accusing Azerbaijan of breaching a world conference that goals to stamp out racial discrimination.
At a preliminary listening to Monday, Azerbaijan had urged the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice to toss out for lack of jurisdiction the case Armenia filed in 2021 that accuses Azerbaijan of a “state-sponsored coverage of Armenian hatred” that has led to “systemic discrimination, mass killings, torture and different abuse.”
The authorized dispute stems from long-standing tensions that erupted right into a 2020 struggle over Nagorno-Karabakh that left greater than 6,600 individuals useless. The area is inside Azerbaijan, however had been beneath the management of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia because the finish of a separatist struggle in 1994.
Azerbaijan argued that Armenia couldn’t deliver the dispute to court docket as a result of the 2 nations had not first engaged in critical negotiations to settle their variations. The nation’s legal professionals additionally informed judges that a lot of the allegations in Armenia’s case fall outdoors the scope of the Conference on the Elimination of all types of Racial Discrimination.
However the chief of Armenia’s authorized staff on the world court docket, Yeghishe Kirakosyan, rejected each arguments, telling judges that “neither of Azerbaijan’s objections stands as much as even cursory scrutiny.”
One other lawyer on Armenia’s staff, Alison Macdonald, informed judges that each one of Armenia’s allegations of violence by Azerbaijanis “are on the very least able to constituting racial discrimination” beneath the conference.
“Certainly, if confirmed, it’s onerous to think about extra flagrant breaches of the conference and of the values which it enshrines. So Armenia respectfully submits that these claims can and should proceed to the deserves,” she added.
No date has been set for judges to rule on jurisdiction. If the case goes forward, it’ll probably take years to resolve. Azerbaijan additionally has filed a case accusing Armenia of breaching the identical racial discrimination conference. Hearings on Armenia’s problem to the court docket’s jurisdiction in that case will probably be held subsequent week.
The 2020 battle ended with a Russia-brokered cease-fire settlement that granted Azerbaijan management over elements of Nagorno-Karabakh in addition to some adjoining territories.
The battle flared once more final yr when Azerbaijan waged a lightning navy marketing campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh that resulted within the overwhelming majority of the area’s 120,000 residents fleeing.
Kirakosyan referred to as the marketing campaign “an unprovoked assault, killing a whole bunch and forcing over 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee their ancestral houses. To this present day, virtually 200 stay lacking and their households endure with out figuring out the destiny of their family members.”
In December, the 2 sides agreed to start negotiations on a peace treaty. Nevertheless, many residents of Armenia’s border areas have resisted the demarcation effort, seeing it as Azerbaijan encroaching on areas they contemplate their very own.
Armenia’s prime minister mentioned final month that the Caucasus nation must outline its border with Azerbaijan shortly to keep away from a brand new spherical of hostilities.