Commonspace.eu in collaboration with LINKS Europe and the Hague Humanity Hub is pleased to invite its readers for an online expert discussion on the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the South Caucasus, which will take place via ZOOM on Thursday, 25 June 2020 from 1800-1930 CEST (equivalent to 2000-2130 Tbilisi/Baku/Yerevan)
We are pleased to announce the next event in the series The Hague Conversations on Conflict by LINKS Europe and The Hague Humanity Hub, which aims to contribute to a better understanding of conflict and help rethink approaches to conflict prevention and resolution. This event will be held virtually but will otherwise maintain a similar format to the activities previously organised in this series. On Thursday, 25 June, in collaboration with the web portal Commonspace.eu, The Hague Conversations on Conflict will turn its attention to the South Caucasus, looking specifically at how the countries of the region have tackled COVID-19 and how the pandemic has affected both domestic politics and the often tense and always finely balanced regional relations.
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia adopted different strategies to contain the pandemic, with different degrees of success. But the strategies were often caught in contentious domestic political debates. The three unrecognised entities in the region - Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh - faced their own challenges in dealing with the pandemic. Covid-19 provided no respite to the war of words between the different players, a reminder of the entrenched and underlying challenges facing the region.
What is the likely political fallout from the pandemic on the politics of the region? Has the regional dynamic changed in any way? And how did external actors - Russia, the EU, China, the United States and others - fare? To discuss these and other questions we will be joined by local experts from the region, speaking from their respective capitals, including:
- Benyamin Poghosyan: Founder and Chairman of the Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies in Yerevan., Armenia.
- Ahmad Alili: Chairman of the Caucasus Policy Analysis Centre of Azerbaijan in Baku.
- Ghia Abashidze: Political analyst, based in Tbilisi, Georgia.
William Murray, Project Officer at LINKS Europe will moderate the conversation- Registration for this event is required. Please register for the event here
The event will be hosted on Zoom and will be accessible through eventbrite. Registrants will receive further details closer to the time -
A video of the previous event in The Hague Conversations on Conflict series, 'China and the West - Avoiding a Confrontation', can be viewed here.
