Caucasus

From the series "Dialogue through Research", International Alert presents the latest analysis from its Georgian-Abkhaz dialogue process on the North Caucasus factor in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict context. Since the 2008 war, the Georgian Government has stepped up efforts to establish links with the peoples of the North Caucasus, to draw them into mutually beneficial partner relations. The case for promoting regional stability in the context of unresolved conflicts with Abkhazia and South Ossetia and ongoing instability in the North Caucasus is strong. However, to understand the complexity of the issues, it is necessary to examine the North Caucasus factor from a number of perspectives. This collection of articles examines political and social trends in the North Caucasus, as well as historical and contemporary relations, including the North Caucasus factor in the 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhaz and August 2008 Russian-Georgian wars.

Since the mid-1990s, international and local civil society actors have been engaged in a wide range of initiatives aimed at transforming the conflicts in the South Caucasus. This book brings together the perspectives and reflections of both Western facilitators and local participants from opposing sides of the conflicts. While not claiming to be fully comprehensive, the initiatives described in this book demonstrate the diversity of peacebuilding, including work with politicians, economic actors, women, media, academia and cultural figures, to name a few. It offers an insider’s view of the vision and drive behind different processes, how they evolved over time, the participants’ motivations, and the authors’ own subjective assessment of success and failure.

International Alert is proud to present its new annual report, “Peace Talks”, which looks back at Alert’s work and impact in 2011 – when Alert celebrated its 25th year – using dialogue as a theme.

Dialogue is a vital tool we use in our peacebuilding work, and we hope that by showing you in this annual report some of the practical ways in which we use dialogue to bring people together or to improve face-to-face communication in situations where communication has broken down, you will get a good sense of how we work as well as our objectives. The regions we focus on in this report to illustrate our theme are Uganda, South Caucasus, Lebanon and Sri Lanka.

The report analyses views among business communities, particularly small- and medium size enterprises (SMEs), on the issue of the regulating trans-Ingur/i economic relations, Georgian-Abkhaz conflict transformation and the invigoration of the political process. The report is a continuation of an Abkhaz-Georgian action research process which began in 2009 and evolved more generally from International Alert’s Economy and Conflict work in the South Caucasus. This work seeks to deepen understanding on the economic dimensions of peacebuilding, as well as to engage economic actors in peacebuilding in the South Caucasus. The aim of the report is two-fold: firstly, to provide empirical evidence and analysis of views within the private sector on regulating trans-Ingur/i economic relations and hence stimulating discussion on the issue; secondly, to put forward recommendations on how regulation could be conducted in order to benefit the broader conflict transformation agenda.

This second edition of the South Caucasus ‘Literary Almanac’ presents a new selection of prose, poetry and essays from the five literatures of the South Caucasus published in one volume in Russian language. This second volume also presents new, previously unpublished writers, and new pieces of work commissioned especially for this edition. Also featured are contemporary photographs from across the region. Along the theme of urban life, this edition offers a new insight into the authors’ cities , sharing emotions across the region and further showing how literature can be used as a tool in building understanding between different peoples.

Второе издание Литературного Альманаха Южного Кавказа представляет собой новое собрание абхазской, армянской, азербайджанской, грузинской и осетинской прозы, поэзии и сочинений, опубликованных в одном сборнике на русском языке. Во втором сборнике также представлены произведения новых, ранее не публиковавшихся авторов, также как и произведения, заказанные специально для этого издания. Также представлены работы современных фотографов со всего региона. Наряду с темой городской жизни, это издание предлагает новый взгляд на города авторов, делясь эмоциями со всего региона и демонстрируя, как литература может быть использована для построения взаимопонимания между различными людьми.