Photo: © 2015, Peace Dialogue NGO. Author: Armine Zakaryan
Even if you follow the world news every day, it is possible that you have never heard about Elena, Yehuda or the “Peace Fighters”. Normally the media ignores these people or the stories of such people; instead they prefer to put articles illustrated with glamorous photos of politicians and movie stars in their media outlets.
Very few know that after the civil war in Macedonia, an OSCE Office worker named Elena, whose father is Muslim and mother is Christian, had for many years been the only one who managed to bring together Muslim Albanians and Christian Macedonians at a negotiation table.
Very few people know that an Israeli soldier named Yehuda, who currently resides in the Palestinian part of the City of Hebron, is someone who had invested a lot of his energy and efforts in the Israel Defense Force to resist the Palestinian troops, but one day he realized that whatever he had done before that moment would never bring peace to his country. Instead of fighting, Yehuda decided to invite Israelis to his city Hebron in the West Bank, so that they can see with their own eyes the conditions his fellow Palestinian citizens live in as a result of the Israeli occupation.
It is even less likely you have come across an article in the media about the “Fighters for Peace” movement which started after the civil war in Lebanon. Members of the movement fight for peace and against the threat of renewed war.
Project “Peace Counts” is supported by the German Berghof Foundation and aims at raising the international community’s awareness of stories like these. Through workshops, discussions, and exhibitions organized within the framework of this project, NGO representatives from different countries have for many years spread the stories of people who work for peace and human rights.
From June 4 to June 7, 2015 another “Peace Counts” workshop was organized for trainers at the office of Peace Dialogue NGO in Vanadzor. The training was conducting by trainers Andrea Zemskov-Zuege, Dagmar Nolden from Germany, and Elena Natenadze from Georgia and Jamila Amichba from Abkhazia. The participants of the training were from Yerevan, Spitak and Vanadzor. In the near future the participants will organize a number of events both in Armenia and Karabakh, based on the stories of “ordinary” people from all over the world who also work for peace and human rights.
