Caucasus

On 16th October, International Alert’s partner Caucasus Business and Development Network (CBDN) organised the annual Caucasus Tea Festival in Tbilisi, Georgia. The aim of the Festival is to promote sectoral cooperation and popularise the Caucasus Tea brand across the region.

This publication contains a collection of articles produced by Abkhaz and Georgian experts on the subject of the political and economic dividends – or losses – that could be brought about by regulating economic relations across the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict divide. It is an outcome of an action research process that began in 2009 and evolved more generally from International Alert’s Economy and Conflict work in the South Caucasus on engaging economic actors in peacebuilding.

Full report

A study visit of analysts and journalists from across the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict divide to South East Asia took place in July and August 2011.

The group visited South East Asia to look at the peacebuilding experiences of the Philippines, where they focused on both separatist and ideological conflicts, and Indonesia, where they looked at the conflicts in East Timor and Aceh.

International Alert is proud to present the first in a series of short analytical articles on topical current affairs from the Caucasus region, with a specific focus on the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.

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.

Between 29th June and 1st July 2011, International Alert’s Caucasus Business and Development Network (CBDN) partners organised a Food Expo in Kars, Turkey with the aim of promoting Turkish-Armenian and South Caucasian business relations as well as regional economic cooperation and dialogue.

The need for greater ‘engagement’ with Abkhazia has been widely acknowledged by the international community and is now even enshrined in official European and Georgian policies. Nevertheless, as ‘meaningful’ engagement is slow to materialise, the trend on the ground is of increasing alienation rather than rapprochement.

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In this study, Georgian and Abkhaz researchers examine one of the fundamental polarising issues of the conflict – the political status of Abkhazia. While Russia formally recognised Abkhazia as an independent state in August 2008, the ‘non-recognition’ of Abkhazia remains the cornerstone of Georgian and international policy. Georgian researchers explore how sustainable the policy of non-recognition is, under what conditions the policy might fail and what Georgia would do in those circumstances.

Full report

*Updated March 2013*

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.