'Preparing populations for peace'. What does this mean for Armenian-Azerbaijani peacebuilding?
In January 2019, following a meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian Foreign Ministers in Paris, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe announced that the ministers had agreed on the necessity of ‘preparing their populations for peace’. This commitment, alongside a significant reduction in frontline violence and the power transition in Armenia, has driven speculation that the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process may be gaining momentum.
Conciliation Resources' new paper, entitled 'Preparing populations for peace: Implications for Armenian-Azerbaijani peacebuilding' presents a summary of discussions at a meeting of the Karabakh Contact Group (KCG) format in Tbilisi, Georgia in May 2019. The Karabakh Contact Group (KCG) is a flexible dialogue format bringing together civil society activists, experts, journalists and policy-makers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorny Karabakh and further afield to think creatively on ways to overcome long-standing challenges in the Nagorny Karabakh peace process.
This work was funded by the European Union, through the European Partnership for the Peaceful Settlement of the Conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh (EPNK). The views expressed here cannot be taken to represent those of the European Union or individual participants of the KCG.
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