Armenia takes rival Azerbaijan to top UN court

Armenia dragged rival Azerbaijan to the UN’s top court on Thursday, accusing it of decades of rights abuses including last year’s war over a disputed region.

Yerevan is calling on the International Court of Justice to take emergency measures to “protect and preserve Armenia’s rights,” the Hague-based tribunal said in a statement.

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Armenia’s case is based on an allegation that Azerbaijan has breached a UN treaty, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

The Armenian application says that “for decades, Azerbaijan has subjected Armenians to racial discrimination,” according to the ICJ.

“As a result of this state-sponsored policy of Armenian hatred, Armenians have been subjected to systemic discrimination, mass killings, torture and other abuse,” the Armenian case says.

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Armenian also says that the alleged violations “once again came to the fore in September 2020, after Azerbaijan’s aggression.”

A six-week war over Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh last autumn claimed more than 6,500 lives.

It ended in November with a Russian-brokered ceasefire under which Armenia ceded territories it had controlled for decades.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan that broke away from Baku’s control in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The ensuing conflict has claimed around 30,000 lives.

Read more: Armenia, Azerbaijan accept ceasefire after three Armenian soldiers killed