Trending
Opinion: The difficult world of building confidence between Armenians and Azerbaijanis
16 August 2023
"Confidence-building measures are a necessary element in any strategy to end conflicts", writes Benyamin Poghosyan in this op-ed for commonspace.eu. Whilst there have been instances of confidence-building measures in the context of the Karabakh conflict for decades, the post-2020 confidence-building measures differ from the pre-war process. "The participants are more realistic in their expectations and assessments of the situation, understanding that no miracles are possible and that any solution requires painful decisions, especially from the Armenian side. A country cannot lose the war and hope for a solution to satisfy all its expectations and desires. However, this understanding also does not mean that in the post-2020 war period, those Armenians involved in confidence-building measures were ready to accept any solution to the conflict. They seek a difficult balance between being realistic and avoiding putting themselves into “echo-chamber”, situations while not rejecting their core beliefs on the acceptable ways of conflict settlement."
