The UN's top court ruled Friday on a long-running clash between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Baku seized in September in a lightning offensive.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled Azerbaijan must enable anyone who wanted to return to Nagorno-Karabakh to do so in a "safe, unimpeded and expeditious manner".
Azerbaijan's one-day offensive, which gave it complete control of the mountainous breakaway region for the first time in three decades, sparked a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians.
The majority of the 120,000-strong population fled into Armenia in a matter of days along the narrow Lachin Corridor road and amid chaotic scenes on the border between the two bitter rivals.
The court also ruled that Azerbaijan must allow anyone wishing to leave the territory to do so and ensure people remaining there would be "free from the use of force or intimidation".
Armenia petitioned the ICJ for so-called "provisional measures" to force Azerbaijan to stop any action "aimed at... displacing the remaining ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh".
The ICJ rules on disputes between states, but while its decisions are legally binding, it has no power to enforce them.
Last week, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev oversaw a military parade in the region's main city of Khankendi, which Armenians refer to as Stepanakert, during which blue-red-green Azerbaijani flags were hoisted.
When AFP visited Nagorno-Karabakh in the immediate aftermath of the attack, the region was completely deserted, with the vast majority of ethnic Armenians having already fled.
During the October 12 hearings at the court in The Hague, the two sides traded barbs over what Armenia described as the "ethnic cleansing" of Nagorno-Karabakh.
"Despite comprising for millennia the great majority of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, almost no ethnic Armenians remain in Nagorno-Karabakh today," said Armenia's ICJ representative Yeghishe Kirakosyan at the time.
"If this is not ethnic cleansing, I do not know what is."
REMINDER: the #ICJ will deliver its Order on the request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by Armenia on 28 September 2023 in the case #Armenia v. #Azerbaijan, today, Friday 17 November, at 3 p.m. (The Hague). Watch the sitting live at https://t.co/xW3nBIcvOH
— CIJ_ICJ (@CIJ_ICJ) November 17, 2023
Kirakosyan said the ICJ "still had time to prevent the forced displacement of ethnic Armenians from becoming irreversible" and to "protect the very few ethnic Armenians who remain in Nagorno-Karabakh".
Diplomatic impasse
Responding for Azerbaijan, representative Elnur Mammadov said Armenia had repeated its accusations of ethnic cleansing so often that the claims "have taken on a life of their own".
Dismissing the ethnic cleansing accusations as "unfounded" and "completely without merit", Mammadov said they "do not reflect the reality of what has actually been going on in Karabakh".
"Azerbaijan has not engaged and will not engage in ethnic cleansing or any form of attack on the civilian population of Karabakh," he said.
Baku has repeatedly stressed it was encouraging ethnic Armenians to return and would afford them safe passage.
The ICJ rules on disputes between states, but while its decisions are legally binding, it has no power to enforce them.
Meanwhile, internationally mediated talks to achieve a comprehensive peace agreement between the arch-foe Caucasus neighbours have so far failed to produce a breakthrough.
(AFP)
