The Third Armenian-Azerbaijani Public Peace Forum took place in Vienna between 24th and 27th March. During the 4 days of the Forum the Armenian and Azerbaijani participants worked together to develop concrete ideas and proposals for confidence building measures that could contribute to the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Forum defined three main areas in which confidence building initiatives and measures should be strengthened and actively implemented: internal work within each society, work to initiate and support direct people-to-people contacts and work to implement joint initiatives between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in areas where this is possible today.
Commenting on the Forum, International Alert’s Dessislava Roussanova, Projects Director for the Eurasia Programme affirmed: “Experience in successful peace processes in other places in the world shows that civil society can play a very important role in peacebuilding. In the Nagorno-Karabakh case, it is the leaders’ responsibility to discuss the framework for a political agreement, but the civil society also has to take its share of the responsibility. Journalists and the media also have a crucial role to play. Civil society and journalists could in fact be leading the people and start building the bridges of trust and confidence that could bring the societies closer to achieving a peaceful settlement”.
Thanks to the success of the 3rd Armenian-Azerbaijani Public Peace Forum, a 4th Armenian-Azerbaijani Forum has already been planned for July 2009, in attempt to move the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process forward.
