Between 10-12 June 2010, Alert’s Economy & Conflict partners from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey as well as Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia, the Caucasus Business and Development Network [4] (CBDN), gathered in Brussels for a strategic planning meeting to discuss their work promoting regional and cross-divide economic cooperation initiatives in the South Caucasus. The meeting also gave an excellent opportunity for CBDN to engage with key EU officials and provide real information on the conflict contexts, while identifying scope for further cooperation.
Since its inception in 2005, CBDN has established itself as a pioneering initiative promoting economic dimensions in peacebuilding in the South Caucasus. As part of its regional work CBDN has created several regional food brands with a view to demonstrating the potential for regional economic cooperation and shared economic interests. In Brussels, CBDN discussed, inter alia, ways to popularise its new Caucasus Tea and Caucasus Bouquet (wine) brands through both commercial and non-commercial ways across the region, as well as various bilateral cross-divide projects ranging from joint-production lines and livelihood initiatives to pest control and new agricultural ventures and advocacy work.
As one CBDN partner said: ’In the South Caucasus, people too readily accept that no cooperation is possible because of the ongoing conflicts and there is a strong sense of apathy with regards to changing this. Through our work we are changing people’s attitudes in their own region by creating positive examples, or precedents, of regional cooperation. This is the future’.
The European Commission and Consilium officials welcomed CBDN’s work as a very positive “anomaly” in the region, usually not associated with cooperation. While the EU’s involvement and relations with the South Caucasus have mainly been through bilateral negotiations, Director Gunnar Wiegand from the Commission’s External Relations Directorate General (DG RELEX, Directorate E) and Advisor Thierry Bechet were particularly interested in hearing what businesses could do to promote cooperation within the region itself and to learn about the status of cross-border and cross-divide economic cooperation.
Given the unique geographic and thematic scope of its work, CBDN was very well positioned to inform the Brussels officials about the current state of affairs. EU Special Representative to the South Caucasus, Peter Semneby, stressed the importance of economic initiatives in conflict resolution processes and elaborated the EU’s new strategy of non-recognition and engagement. While the approach was welcomed it was also mentioned that the current problems with regards to issuing visas for people from the disputed territories can lead the strategy to be perceived as hollow and declaratory rather than an attempt to genuinely engage with the concrete problems in the region.