Support for Civil Peace Initiatives

On August 20-27, 2018, 24 young people aged 18-25 representing France, Germany, Turkey, and Armenia, reunited in Vanadzor and Yerevan for implementing the second phase of the four-national exchange program launched in November, 2017. The project is organized by the Marseille-based organization “Une Terre Culturelle” with the participation of Centre Français de Berlin (French Center in Berlin), AFS in Istanbul, and the Vanadzor-based “Peace Dialogue” NGO.

On August 2-12, the 3rd Summer School organized within the scope of “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art” took place in Borjomi, Georgia. Around 40 activists from Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Germany, and Georgia participated in the final meeting of the four-year program initiated by Peace Dialogue NGO and its German partner OWEN e.V.

According to official numbers, more than 496,000 people were forcibly evicted from Chechnya and Ingushetia by Stalin’s regime in 1944. The official documents state that 411,000 people were sent to Kazakhstan and 86,000 to Kyrgyzstan. Other sources put the number much higher, at over 650,000. Chechen historians claim that about 400,000 people died during the deportation.

“People were put in cattle wagons, which would stop on the way only to let people relieve themselves” – tells Hava Mahmudova, remembering the stories her mother told her about the deportation of her family to Kazakhstan. – “During the stops, soldiers demanded that the bodies of the dead were unloaded…

A four-day workshop entitled Gender Approach in Community Organizing was held in Zugdidi, Georgia from 9thto 12thof May, 2018. The event was initiated by Tsitsino Shengelia from the Centre for Civic Activism from Zugdidi in the framework of the project “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art”.

The group of participants of the four-day school of using video for advocacy consisted mainly of people from Novocherkassk. However, the project team involved several members of the ARENA network from other countries or people who were delegated by the network members.

Noteworthy, that two of the ARENA project participants, Lyubov Martinets from Ukraine and Zulfiya Safkhanova from Azerbaijan, were involved as co-facilitators of the training. The purpose was to further strengthen the regional network and to involve new actors from the mentioned regions. In total 23 participants of different age-groups and professions attended the school. With the support and mentorship of the facilitators and co-facilitators they learned the basic skills of video-making, script writing, video editing, etc.

On March 25 screening of the films, produced under the umbrella of the regional program “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art” launched and supported by the “Peace Dialogue” NGO, and a follow up discussion took place in the coffee shop “12 Chairs”. Documentary and animated movies “The Corridor” (director Igrar Gurban, Azerbaijan), “Mark Lvovich Tyulpanov and Others” (director Daria Kavelina, Ukraine), and “Hostility” (director Norayr Hambaryan, Armenia) were shown.

The project “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art” was launched in 2015. The project is aimed at improving the impact of peacebuilding efforts by the civil society actors in the conflict affected post-Soviet area. For the last three years, the project initiators, Armenian NGO Peace Dialogue and OWEN e.V. in Germany, support peacebuilding and human rights activists as well as independent artists from the South Caucasus Region, Russian Federation and Ukraine in developing pro-active, art-based strategies and hands-on methodologies for the community-based peacebuilding.

In 2018 the teams in PD and OWEN will strive to support the local groups in implementing activities derived from their strategies, further strengthen the regional network and to involve new actors from the mentioned regions.