Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno Karabakh and its weaponization of environmentalism

This week the UN’s highest court ruled that Azerbaijan needs to take all steps at its disposal to lift the blockade on the only highway that connects Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, with the outside world.

This comes after months of Azerbaijan’s blockade, and as the situation for people living in Nagorno Karabakh has become increasingly desperate. Azerbaijan has argued that there is no blockade and that the protesters are engaged in grassroots environmental demonstrations.

Simon Maghakyan, a visiting scholar at Tufts University and a Ph.D. student in Heritage Crime at Cranfield University, joins Thanos Davelis to look at this latest decision by the ICJ and break down how Azerbaijan is weaponizing environmentalism to justify ethnic cleansing.