Azerbaijan requests World Court to order Armenia to stop mining in once held territories

• Azerbaijan has asked the World Court to require Armenia to stop burying landmines.
• Azeri troops drove ethnic Armenian forces out of large swaths of land they had ruled.
• Both nations are signatories to the International Convention.

According to the World Court, Azerbaijan requested on Thursday that it force neighboring Armenia to stop burying landmines in areas that it once controlled and to provide details about the whereabouts of mines, booby traps, and other explosives.

Azerbaijan claimed that “new information” had shown that Armenia continued to knowingly put landmines in “civilian zones to which displaced Azerbaijanis are slated to return” in its plea for temporary measures in a case that has lasted years.

The court said in a statement that Azerbaijan had urged it to require Armenia to “immediately cease to plant or to support the planting of landmines and booby-traps” and to take all necessary measures for the safe demining of communities.

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Before Russia mediated a ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in October 2020, Azeri troops drove ethnic Armenian forces out of large swaths of land they had ruled throughout the 1990s.

The request was made by Azerbaijan as part of tit-for-tat cases that were brought by both Armenia and Azerbaijan to the World Court in 2021. Both states are signatories to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

In that year, the World Court issued emergency orders requiring both nations to refrain from inciting racial animosity toward one another’s citizens and from acting in a way that might fuel the conflict while the court was deliberating the matter.

If the court would take the request for fresh provisional measures under consideration remained unclear.

The UN’s court for resolving disputes between nations is the World Court at The Hague, formally known as the International Court of Justice.

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