Support for Civil Peace Initiatives

During the initial phases of the project, the idea of creating sustainable platform/network of civil society actors involved in peacebuilding initiatives in the targeted conflict affected countries remains a priority for the ARENA implementing team.

All the participants had the opportunity to apply for a project which would allow them to get closely acquainted with each other, share their own experience among each other, learn about the situation in the local communities, as well as present projects aimed at cooperative learning and strengthen the ties between the activists and independent artists functioning in the spheres of human rights and peace-building in Russian Federation, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia.

German Foundation Culture Counts in cooperation with the Federal Foreign Office organized the first “Global Peacebuilder Summit” from September 4-9, 2016. 30 peace and human rights activists from around the world gathered in Berlin to discuss the role of civil society in peacebuilding processes. The objective of the “Global Peacebuilder Summit” was to strengthen these key actors in their commitment, to make their work better known to the broad public, and to facilitate the networking between them.

The inaugural ARENA: Summer School for Peace and Art was held this year in Borjomi, Georgia. During the Summer School a group of 47 activists, independent artists and trainers from 9 different countries including the Russian Federation, Netherlands, Armenia, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, Italy, Ukraine, Georgia, and Germany worked in three groups: theatre, graphic design and video.
The Summer School was organized under the scope of the three-year project ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art launched in 2015. ARENA aims to empower civil society representatives of former Soviet Union and Eastern partnership countries and the Russian Federation to work together to develop creative approaches, new methods and activities in the field of human rights and peace building.

“Very often people get angry and say “Where were you before the conflict? Why weren’t you doing such trainings before the conflict?” And I answer, we do our activities not after this conflict but before a future possible conflict. The things we say to other people mean nothing and have no effect on them. The most effective method is how we live our lives and how we deal with the things in a given situations: this is what people see and value first of all”. – This is how G. Bozicevic formulated his view on peace leadership.

Through the grant from CMI, Peace Dialogue provided financial support to a total of five projects. In two of the projects the participants were mainly young people. These projects were intended to analyze public monuments as components of collective memory and the messages they send to future generations. Another three projects were directed at particular segments of the history, for example documentation of the memories of women who survived the war and children born after the war.

The idea of having a monument dedicated to the “Victims of March 1st” was raised by a group of young people in Vanadzor. They think that it is important to have such a monument first of all because it has been 8 years since the death of a group of protesters who were killed on …