The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will hold its first public hearing on September 13 into the case initiated two years ago by Georgia against Russia.

The September 13 hearing will be followed with three others this week and all the four public hearings will focus only on “the preliminary objections to jurisdiction, raised by the Russian Federation,” the Hague-based court said in August.

Russia presented its preliminary objections on jurisdiction to ICJ in December, 2009, as Moscow claims that the Hague-based court is not competent to rule on the case filed by Georgia.

Georgia filed application to ICG on August 12, 2008 over Russia’s “serious violations of its fundamental obligations” under the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) “during three distinct phases of its interventions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia” in the period between 1990 and August 2008.