Let's give peace a chance!

On April 12th, Civil Society Institute organized an intercommunity youth seminar in Chambarak. There were young people from Yerevan, Chambarak, Martuni, Akunq, Ashnak and Vardenis, as well as from Lithuania, Italy and Holland. There had been non formal educational games concerning transformation interpersonal, ethnic conflicts, and effective communication skills. The volunteers from Lithuania and Italy told stories about Vilnius and South Tyrol, and presented their approach to the Karabakh conflict. They also have written an example of a constructive dialogue, which is presented bellow.
The seminar was organized within frames of “Civil Society Network” and Peacebuilding and conflict transformation programs.

Let's give peace a chance!
Workshop in Chambarak: an example of constructive dialogue.

Chambarak is a town, which itself tells a story of a recent history. People still remember how the town looked before the war, its restaurants, hotels, concert hall and culture home, which were destroyed. And their close ones, who never came back.

It is not by any means an easy task to talk to young people from this town about the conflict of Nagorno Karabagh and relations with Azeris. Nor is it easy to speak about the possible resolution of the conflict.

Conflicts, by their essence, make any effort to talk about them complicated. If you are on one side of the conflict, you may not be able to see an unbiased version or not willing to find out how other side has suffered. If you are just a foreigner, you may not know which facts to trust or which stories to believe. Also, as a foreigner you never have witnessed it. For them, you will not ever be able to understand their pain and grievances. However, it makes one wonder, if this inherited complexity makes misunderstanding predetermined? Is the dialogue ever possible?

On the other hand, if one takes a look, what does the conflict consist of, one may find: it is territory, 2 or more nations and rivalry. When it comes to first two, the world is full of examples when different nations had to share the territory with each other. And either
The consequences were tragic or nations learnt to live with each other. On one hand there are examples of Chechens fighting in Russia, Basks fighting in Spain, Tibetans in China and many others. The fate of them has been tragic, with eruption of terrorism or exile or constant fighting and violence from both sides. On the other hand – there are stories from Europe which prove that it is possible to overcome the hate and live with respect.

In the seminar of Chambarak two stories were told. One is the story of South-Tyrol, which was part of Austria until the World War I and was ceded to Italy in 1919. In that time not even 4% of the population was Italian, but between 1924 and 1945 the fascist regime wanted that territory to be Italianized. After the World War II the rivalry between Italians and Austrians was a real problem and leaded even to some violent and terrorist episodes in the late 60s and 70s. After that South-Tyrol got the status of Autonomous Region. Nowadays in South-Tyrol you can find both German and Italian schools, places have two (Italian and German) names on the road signs. Public jobs are assigned by language-group quotas, and require proficiency in both Italian and German. That’s how two nations could find rules and set up the living together.
And another – a story of Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, how it has changed the owner three times in last century (in 1922 Poland took it from Lithuania, in 1944 Soviet Union took over Lithuania and Vilnius was reconnected to Lithuania and finally in 1990 Lithuania became and independent country). When Lithuanians got back Vilnius, there were still Polish living there. Some of them moved back to Poland. However now the composition of Vilnius is only about 60% Lithuanian, 19 % of Polish, 14 % of Russians (also who could be considered as occupants, because Lithuania was annexed by Russia during Russia’s empire time and Soviet Union time), 4 % of Belarusians and 0.5% Jews. In Vilnius and some other cities there are Polish and Russian schools, there are political parties representing them in National Parliament and public discourse towards each other is generally peaceful. If Lithuanians would have started to hate polish people when they occupied Vilnius or if Polish would have started to hate and kill Lithuanians, for sure we could have had another conflict going on even now.
A success story – easy to be jealous for, easy to reject and say – our case was absolutely different, and maybe less easy to understand that it took mental efforts of every person to accept each other and to realize that the hard acceptance and a compromise is still better than thousand of dead people from both sides.

And so was our question, no matter who started it and no matter who is more guilty (because there are always going to be different answers to that), is it still worthy to keep this war going?
From the start of the conflict, there was 20 000 deaths of Armenians and Azeris together. People are dying every year because of this conflict. And it may continue and most likely will continue. So why is rivalry and emotion more important than a life of a person?