Armenia urges United Nations court to order Azerbaijan to end road block

The hearing at the International Court of Justice comes amid rising tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia just over two years after they ended a war that killed about 6,800 soldiers and displaced around 90,000 civilians.

Armenia pleaded with judges of the United Nations' highest court on January 30 to order Azerbaijan to break up a road blockade that is isolating the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, calling the action part of an act of “ethnic cleansing.”

The hearing at the International Court of Justice comes amid rising tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia just over two years after they ended a war that killed about 6,800 soldiers and displaced around 90,000 civilians. Nagorno-Karabakh 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.

Late last year, Azerbaijanis claiming to be environmental activists began blocking a winding road known as the Lachin Corridor that forms the only land connection between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The blockade threatens food supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh’s 1,20,000 people. Armenia argues the protests are orchestrated by Azerbaijan and says the country also has repeatedly halted supplies of gas to the region.

“The Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh has been almost entirely cut off from the outside world," Lawrence Martin, a lawyer representing Armenia, told judges on Monday. "They have been — and they continue to be — deprived of access to food, medicine and all the other necessities of life. Without swift action by the court their lives are in danger.”

Armenia's main legal representative to the court, Yeghishe Kirakosyan, told judges that Azerbaijan has effectively tuned the Lachin Corridor into a one-way street. “Ethnic Armenians may not enter Nagorno-Karabakh but they may leave," he said. "Judges of the court, such blatant acts of ethnic cleansing have no place in modern era.”

The local government in Nagorno-Karabakh has begun rationing essential food staples and called for a humanitarian airlift for critical supplies, but Azerbaijan hasn’t given authorisation for the region’s airport to operate.

The long-running underlying territorial conflict ended in a Russia-brokered cease-fire agreement that granted Azerbaijan control over parts of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as adjacent land occupied by Armenians. Russia sent a peacekeeping force of 2,000 troops to maintain order, including ensuring that the Lachin Corridor remained open.