School No 8. Baku. Last day before summer holidays. About a third of the kids in this picture are Armenian. I’m in the back row, slightly obscured by another kid. The date on the board is May 1987. Within a few months Karabakh conflict will begin. Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia will start arriving in Baku and Sumgait. By February 1988 it will be Armenians fleeing en mass.

While negotiations to resolve the conflict through the OSCE Minsk Group continue to falter, and not least with both Armenia and Azerbaijan preparing for presidential elections in 2013, a new book by Dutch writer Arthur Huizinga and photographer Dirk-Jan Visser hopes to examine the conflict through the prism of football. Offside: Football in Exile tells the story of two football teams, FK Qarabağ Ağdam and FK Karabakh Stepanakert, and was published earlier this year by YdocPublishing/Paradox.

On behalf of Free Press Unlimited you are cordially invited to the closing ceremony of South Caucasus Multimedia Course organized by Free Press Unlimited, funded by the Netherlands Embassy in Georgia, in cooperation with the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, Yerevan Press Club and Freedom of Expression Coalition for Azerbaijan. The Ambassador of the Netherlands Embassy in Tbilisi and representatives of the three partner organizations will be present. The screenings of the multimedia productions will be followed by a reception at the Multimedia Education Centre at Al. Chavchavadze str.10A, Tbilisi, Georgia. The ceremony starts at 16.00 hrs and ends at 19.00 hrs.

The Philosophical Society, Trinity College Dublin, 24 October 2012

In co-operation with the 2012 Irish Chairmanship of the OSCE and the support of the United States Mission to the OSCE and the Permanent Mission of Lithuania to the OSCE.

Training: Istanbul, Turkey, November 30 – December 6, 2012
Description of Training
A training workshop on Transitional Justice and Human Rights after Armed Conflicts will take place in Istanbul, Turkey between November 30 and December 6, 2012. Participants of the training will represent different nationalities from the South Caucasus: Abkhazians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians and Ossetians. Training workshop will be conducted by European experts.
All costs of transportation to and from the location of the training as well as accommodation, meals, training materials, and per diems will be covered by the organizers.
Training workshop …

Free Press Unlimited is organizing an intensive course in multimedia storytelling for twenty-four young journalists working in the regions of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, conducted by four excellent (photo) journalists and documentary makers. The course offers participants a unique opportunity to develop their multimedia storytelling skills, working on their own projects as well as on joint productions. The productions will focus on domestic issues as well as issues of regional relevance. The participants will be challenged to have an open mind, to break stereotypes, to get inspired by ordinary events, making extraordinary stories worth sharing.

In the present phase of the conflict over Mountainous Karabakh, the deadlock in the peace process is due to symbolism, says Professor Niyazi Mehdi. There is no solution through standard methods: the Armenians are not ready to give away the symbol of an independent republic, while the Azeris refuse the alteration of their borders. Similar situations exist in the conflicts between Chechnya and Russia, and between Abkhazia and Georgia. In order to resolve this deadlock, Professor Mehdi proposes a new autonomy model. Although the model we propose is thought of in the context of the Caucasus, it may be applied in other places, for example in Cyprus, or in Southern Azerbaijan which is tied to Iran, after the necessary transformations there.

AMARAS, Nagorno Karabakh — In an almost perfectly idyllic setting, with a monastery dating back to the 4th century and a nearby mulberry orchard, there’s hardly a soul around. Even the church in the complex is empty, save for a small boy waiting to sell candles to anyone who does visit. The roads are devoid of traffic and therefore silent, while the only sound that breaks up the tranquil atmosphere is that of bird song. Mesrop Mashtots, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet, is reputed to have established a pioneering school to use his unique script here at the beginning of the 5th century, but the first time I visited Amaras was by military helicopter in 1994 for another reason entirely.

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh in the early 1990s cost the lives of around 30,000 people and also displaced hundreds of thousands on both sides. Hundreds of settlements were razed and cultural monuments were destroyed not only during the war, but also in the 18 years since the 1994 ceasefire agreement.

On 1 March 2012 the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) and Eurasia Partnership Foundation (EPF) held a one-day conference on Turkey’s South Caucasus Agenda: Roles of State and Non-State Actors. Examining the country’s potential role in the region, new data from the Caucasus Resource Research Centers (CRRC) was included in a presentation by Dr. Hans Gutbrod, its regional director.
In particular, CRRC’s 2011 Caucasus Barometer included questions formulated by Thomas de Waal, Senior Associate in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment, which identify current views …