Azerbaijan urges top UN court to toss out Armenian case alleging racial discrimination

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Lawyers for Azerbaijan on Monday urged the top United Nations court to throw out a case filed by Armenia linked to the long-running dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, arguing that judges do not have jurisdiction.

Armenia filed the case at the International Court of Justice in 2021, accusing Azerbaijan of a “state-sponsored policy of Armenian hatred” that has led to “systemic discrimination, mass killings, torture and other abuse.”

The legal dispute stems from long-standing tensions that erupted into a 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh that left more than 6,600 people dead. The region is within Azerbaijan, but had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since the end of a separatist war in 1994.

Armenia’s case is based on an international convention on stamping out racial discrimination, which has a clause allowing disputes to be resolved by the world court if bilateral negotiations fail to broker a settlement.