Strengthening the capacity of the Peacebuilding Sector in the South Caucasus

Last month International Alert organised a four-day training seminar for students from South Ossetia on overcoming societal trauma through civic activism, as part of a project funded by the European Union and UK Conflict Pool.

Last month ten Armenian and Azerbaijani media professionals travelled to Bosnia and Herzegovina to attend an intensive conflict study programme organised by International Alert.

The trip was part of our broader programme supported by the European Union and UK Conflict Pool which involves working with journalists from the Nagorny Karabakh conflict context.

International Alert has published a new Economy and Conflict study on the Georgian-Abkhaz context. Prospects for the regulation of trans-Ingur/i economic relations: Stakeholder analysis analyses the views among business communities, particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), on the issue of regulating economic relations across the river Ingur/i which largely follows the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict divide.

Between 21st-30th November, International Alert organised a study visit to London and Belfast and trainings in conflict analysis and conflict-sensitive journalism for a group of nine journalists working for the mainstream media in Armenia and Azerbaijan, including the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Following on from the successful hosting of a “Peacebuilding School for Gender Activists” in August 2011, International Alert gathered together some of the most promising and talented young women activists from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh for a three-day workshop from 6th to 8th December, as part of a wider project funded by the US State Department.

International Alert recently organised a study visit to Abkhazia for eight teachers from different parts of South Ossetia as part of an ongoing psycho-social and civil society capacity-building initiative.

In March, a selected number of Georgian and Abkhaz experts and businesspeople – including one additional partner from South Ossetia – visited Cyprus to study the Greenline Regulations. These regulations facilitate economic relations across the divided island of Cyprus in the absence of a political solution to the conflict and were adopted in 2004.

‘Global Trends and Threats and the South Caucasus’ was the topic of a regional roundtable that International Alert organised in Tbilisi, Georgia on 13th April 2010. Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian experts took part in this one-day event, together with representatives from the international community and international organisations based in Tbilisi, as well as diplomats from some of the embassies in Georgia.

The repeated recurrences of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict since 1992 following the break-up of the Soviet Union, along with the increasing isolation of South Ossetia from the outside world have resulted in widespread trauma and the destruction of South Ossetian social fabric. In particular, since the latest flare-up of violent hostilities in August 2008, working on such a prolonged and deep conflict requires an extremely careful and balanced approach based on the principle of “do no harm”.

The second of Alert’s psycho-social trainings for teachers from South Ossetia took place between 20th-22nd September in the city of Istanbul, Turkey. Following on from the first seminar in Brussels earlier this year, the agenda and methodology used aimed to impart skills required to deal with individual and social trauma, the result of repeated cycles of violent conflict in South Ossetia, most recently in August 2008.