Armenia and Azerbaijan are arguing at the highest UN court. Armenia wants the judges to make Azerbaijan pull out its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh and let Armenians who had to leave come back safely.
The hearings at the International Court of Justice come only weeks after Azerbaijan‘s lightning offensive to take control of the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh for the first time in three decades.
The one-day operation sparked a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians, with the vast majority of the estimated 120,000 who had been living in the territory fleeing into Armenia.
The separatist Karabakh authorities announced that the self-proclaimed republic will be dissolved on January 1, 2024.
Armenia asked the ICJ to tell Azerbaijan to remove all their military and law enforcement from civilian places in Nagorno-Karabakh. They also want the court to make sure Azerbaijan doesn’t do anything that makes Armenian people leave or stop them from coming back safely.
The ICJ decides arguments between countries, but it can’t make them do things. The hearing in The Hague on Thursday is part of a long legal fight between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Both countries say the other broke a UN agreement, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).
After the fighting in September, Armenia said Azerbaijan was trying to get rid of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, calling it “ethnic cleansing.” However, Azerbaijan strongly denies this and has told Armenian residents to stay and be part of Azerbaijan again.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a hilly area, had mostly Armenian people and was under Azerbaijan’s control after the Russian Empire ended.
In 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up, Nagorno-Karabakh said it was its own boss with help from Armenia.
After the recent events, Armenian leaders agreed to be part of a different world court in The Hague, called the International Criminal Court (ICC). This made Russia very angry because the ICC wants to arrest Russia’s top leader, Vladimir Putin, for supposedly taking Ukrainian kids during Moscow’s attack.
CREDIT:FRANCE24