Nagorno-Karabakh: Is it time to bring peacekeeping and confidence building back on the agenda?

The "four-day war", fought between the Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces from 1-5 April 2016, has forced the international community to take a fresh look at the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Although the fighting ended with a truce reached under Russia's auspices, it showed the threat for further escalation and violence to be very real, raising the stakes for both sides in the conflict, and for the international community. In this Discussion Paper, Amanda Paul and Dennis Sammut discuss the latest developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and argue that, with prospects of a resolution once more on the horizon, it is important that the momentum of any breakthrough is quickly consolidated. Peacekeeping and confidence building are an essential part of this process and the international community, most particularly the EU, must move fast to ensure that such measures are in place as soon as they are needed.

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Thursday Interview: Murad Muradov

Thursday Interview: Murad Muradov

Today, commonspace.eu starts a new regular weekly series. THURSDAY INTERVIEW, conducted by Lauri Nikulainen, will host  persons who are thinkers, opinion shapers, and implementors in their countries and spheres. We start the series with an interview with Murad Muradov, a leading person in Azerbaijan's think tank community. He is also the first co-chair of the Action Committee for a new Armenian-Azerbaijani Dialogue. Last September he made history by being the first Azerbaijani civil society activist to visit Armenia after the 44 day war, and the start of the peace process. Speaking about this visit Murad Muradov said: "My experience was largely positive. My negative expectations luckily didn’t play out. The discussions were respectful, the panel format bringing together experts from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey was particularly valuable during the NATO Rose-Roth Seminar in Yerevan, and media coverage, while varied in tone, remained largely constructive. Some media outlets though attempted to represent me as more of a government mouthpiece than an independent expert, which was totally misleading.  Overall, I see these initiatives as important steps in rebuilding trust and normalising professional engagement. The fact that soon a larger Azerbaijani civil society visits to Armenia followed, reinforces the sense that this process is moving in the right direction." (click the image to read the interview in full)