The UN’s top court will decide on Tuesday on tit-for-tat requests by Armenia and Azerbaijan for emergency measures to ease tensions after last year’s war between the Caucasus arch-foes.
The former Soviet republics, which battled for six weeks in autumn 2020 over Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, both allege racial discrimination by the other side.
In September, the rivals each asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) located in the Peace Palace of The Hague to take steps against the other, pending the resolution of a full case that will take years.
The ICJ’s chief judge Joan Donoghue “will deliver its order on the request for the indication of provisional measures made by the Republic of Armenia” at 1400 GMT, the court said in a statement.
Its ruling on Azerbaijan’s case will follow immediately afterwards. The ICJ was set up after World War II to resolve disputes between United Nations member states.
Parties that have agreed to let the court adjudicate their disputes are obliged to follow its rulings, but the court has no means to enforce them.—Agencies