On January 23, the Government of Azerbaijan filed a Memorial in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Press Office of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reported. This represents a major development in Azerbaijan’s international legal proceedings against Armenia under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

The Memorial filed in the Court is based on thousands of pages of evidence documenting almost thirty years of injustice. It provides detailed information about the Azerbaijanis killed, displaced, and harmed in one of the most horrific campaigns of cleansing by Armenia based on ethnic and national origin.  

"Armenia’s invasion and illegal occupation of territories internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan were accompanied by a conscious and deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. This practice, which continued until 2020, aimed to create an ethnically pure Armenian settlement on Azerbaijan's territory through destruction, looting, and exploitation of Azerbaijani districts," the report added.

"Armenia's ethnic discrimination policy and practice, as well as the illegal occupation for almost thirty years, prevented all Azerbaijani citizens to return to their homes in Karabakh the region of Azerbaijan. To this day, hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani IDPs still cannot return to their former homes. Entire towns, such as Fuzuli, Aghdam, Jabrayil, Gubadlı, Zangilan, Kalbajar, were destroyed as part of Armenia’s occupation and "scorched earth" policy when it retreated from the then-occupied territories following the war in 2020. 95% of all buildings located in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region were razed to the ground since Armenia’s occupation in 1991," the statement said.

The ministry's information added: "On the based intensive evidence submitted, Azerbaijan has requested that the Court declare Armenia as responsible for wholesale violations of human rights of Azerbaijanis. In particular, Azerbaijan has requested the Court to find the Government of Armenia responsible for ethnic cleansing, including through unlawful killing, torture, destruction, and dispossession; cultural erasure; the promotion of hatred against Azerbaijanis; failure to promote tolerance of Azerbaijanis among the Armenian population; and state sponsorship of armed hate groups in Armenia."

Azerbaijan also requested that the Court urge Armenia to uphold its obligations to disclose all information about the missing Azerbaijanis, restore to Azerbaijanis all property and land illegally taken, cease its promotion of hatred and state support for armed hate groups, and ultimately apologize and take responsibility for thirty years of human rights abuses.