THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CN) — The United Nations' top court heard opening arguments Thursday in Armenia's request for temporary protective measures against its neighbor Azerbaijan.

Officials in Armenia's capital of Yerevan have complained to The Hague-based International Court of Justice, or ICJ, that Azerbaijan's government based in Baku violated a treaty outlawing racial discrimination during the 2020 conflict over the breakaway region Nagorno-Karabakh that left 6,500 people dead. 

“It is ethnic discrimination pure and simple,” lawyer Pierre d’Argent said on behalf of Armenia. Both countries are party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial intolerance. 

The disputed 1,700-square-mile area technically falls within the borders of Azerbaijan, but 90% of its 150,000 inhabitants are ethnically Armenian. The area had been under the control of Armenian forces since an earlier war over the territory. Hostilities broke out again last year after a skirmish in a border region. 

Armenia wants the ICJ to order Azerbaijan to stop “espousing hatred of people of Armenian ethnic or national origin,” and specifically to close down a park created to celebrate Azerbaijan's victory in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. The Military Trophy Park opened in Azerbaijan’s capital in January 2021, displaying seized equipment and even the helmets of dead Armenian soldiers. 

Lawyers for Armenia cited multiple remarks made by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, calling Armenian people barbarians and vandals and claiming they are unable to build their own state so instead leech off of other nations.

"Generations upon generations are indoctrinated into this culture of fear and hate of anything and everything Armenian," Armenia's agent Yeghishe Kirakosyan told the court Thursday. 

Azerbaijan has countersued Armenia under the same treaty and has also requested provisional measures in a separate case that will be heard next week. In its rebuttal, its lawyers argue that it was Armenia, not Azerbaijan, that has engaged in ethnic cleansing. 

The Nagorno-Karabakh region has been a source of conflict since war first broke out over the territory in 1988, following the fall of the Soviet Union. A ceasefire was negotiated in 1994 after some 30,000 were killed, but the peace was fragile. Thirty soldiers were killed when more fighting broke out in 2016.

In an interview last week with France 24, President Aliyev said Azerbaijan was ready to "work on a future peace agreement." 

Representatives for both countries will be allowed to respond in court Friday.