South Caucasus

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has called for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Georgia in a declaration adopted during the Assembly’s 32nd annual session held in Porto, Portugal on 3 July. The declaration expressed alarm over the developments since the parliamentary elections held on 26 October last year including reports of arbitrary detentions, violence and ill-treatment of protesters, opposition leaders and media representatives, as documented by civil society organizations and the Public Defender of Georgia. The declaration also called for new elections to be held in Georgia.

The animosity between Armenians and Azerbaijanis runs deep. The two nations fought many battles against each other. In the wars of the last forty years, tens of thousands of people were killed, hundreds of thousands displaced, and billions of euros were lost in economic harm. On Thursday, 13 March 2025, the two sides finally announced that they had agreed on the text of a peace agreement. The agreement will be signed soon. Within societies, on both sides, there are expectations of what this peace will bring. There is also a sense of uncertainty and confusion, which is being used by spoilers, internal and external. A dialogue involving different segments of society, is now more important than ever. But this dialogue needs to have new characteristics to respond to new realities. LINKS Europe, an organisation that has been involved in many peace initiatives in the South Caucasus in the past, is currently engaged in such a process. It recently launched a new Armenia-Azerbaijan dialogue format in the framework of the European Union's EU4Peace initiative. In the last two weeks, dozens of Armenians and Azerbaijanis, including academics, students, civil society activists, journalists and other professionals, many of them young, were involved. The work is organised in five thematic groups focusing on peace and security, connectivity, environment, governance and gender and equality and in phase 2 of the project, which has just ended, around fifty participants took part in in-person and online meetings, and more than twenty others were involved indirectly. The Chairpersons of the five thematic groups met in Vilnius, 3-6 July to launch the third phase of the program.