He argues that Yerevan has not sat down to negotiate and that his request “is outside the jurisdiction of the court”
April 15 () –
Azerbaijan on Monday asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to dismiss Yerevan's demand to impose provisional measures against Baku for having carried out “ethnic cleansing” in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov has argued before the United Nations court that Armenia's decision to invoke Article 22 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) is “premature.”
In this sense, he defended during his speaking turn that Armenia has failed to engage in negotiations with Azerbaijan in this regard and that Yerevan has used the process before the ICJ to “launch a media campaign” against Baku.
“Azerbaijan's second preliminary objection is that, even if the precondition of negotiation is met, several elements of Armenia's request remain outside the material jurisdiction of the court,” he added.
Mammadov also explained that Azerbaijani territories “were illegally invaded between 1991 and 1994 and later occupied by Armenia for more than 30 years, in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions.”
Armenia filed a petition with the United Nations' highest court in September 2021 to impose precautionary measures against Azerbaijan for inciting “for decades” hate speech against Armenians and, as a result of this state-sponsored policy, the population suffered a ” systemic discrimination, mass murder, torture and other abuses.
Even after the ceasefire that came into force in 2020 between the parties, “Azerbaijan continued to commit murder, torture and other abuses against prisoners of war, hostages and other detainees,” reads the document presented then by Yerevan.
It also accused Azerbaijan of “systematically” destroying, erasing and falsifying Armenian culture through the demolition of Armenian cultural, religious and historical monuments.
Nagorno Karabakh is a territory of about 4,400 square kilometers in the South Caucasus recovered by Azerbaijan in a military offensive of just 24 hours that began on September 19, after the wars between 1988 and 1994 and that of 2020.
Armenia assured at the end of September 2023 that 88,000 people had to flee the region after the Azerbaijan Army took control of the area, which represented around two thirds of the population that the territory had before. of the offensive.
