About us

Hello.

If you are watching this message, then that you have logged on the Public Dialogues. The Public Dialogues website is an opportunity to acquaint yourselves and conduct distance discussions and send interactive messages to one another. These are joint discussions on very important and topical events of the day of mutual interest. This is an opportunity for the media to participate in joint Internet press-conferences which we organize for the media outlets in the two countries. When the figures from our and other countries answer the questions of the media outlets, the media outlets publish this information in the issues of their outlets.

We, Region Research Center in Armenia and The Institute of Peace and Democracy in Azerbaijan, created this website within the framework of our joint project which is supported by the British Embassies in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

On our website we are trying to give an opportunity to everyone interested in the Armenian and Azerbaijani realia to get first-hand information. By these realia we mean not only the present-day relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but also the whole of the reality in which today’s Armenia and today’s Azerbaijan live. Possibly this is not very pleasant to the listeners and readers, and the information, opinions and approaches are not quite legitimate for the opposite party. And still, these are real opinions, existent in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

“We are not trying to resolve the conflict,” organizations in Armenia and Azerbaijan that cooperate with one another usually say. “We are only trying to bring close the positions of the two sides.”

Whereas I believe that we are somehow trying to resolve this conflict because we are trying to fill in the information vacuum with real and trustworthy information. And I hope that this platform will become a platform for all those who are interested in our life, life in Armenia and Azerbaijan, in the Armenian and Azerbaijani societies who have long been living in the conflict mode, so that they will be able to draw parallels on their own and see where we differ, in what we are alike, and to what extent these difference are possible or impossible to overcome.

----------------------------------------------

About Region Research Center

Research Center "Region" was founded in 2001 and until November 2008 it functioned as one of the autonomous links of the Investigative Journalists of Armenia NGO. Since November 2008 the Center has been functioning as a separate legal entity – an NGO.

"Region":

- Studies the issues concerning cooperation, security and integration of the South Caucasian countries. The analytical articles by the "Region" center are periodically published in Armenian and foreign press

- Conducts media and sociological researches

- Cooperates with the investigative-political science, journalist-professional, non-governmental organizations of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia and other countries, carries out joint projects with them

- Initiates discussions of socially important issues concerned with the South Caucasian countries

- Supports wide information exchange between the media and experts from the South Caucasus, creation of a common informational field and effective collaboration in the region

You can see also: Caucasus Journalists network www.regioncenter.info/ru/; www.caucasusjournalists.net

Good afternoon,

Soon we will see in the 10th anniversary of the cooperation between the Institute for Peace and Democracy in Azerbaijan and Region Research Center in Armenia (which bore a different name at the launch of our cooperation) in terms of the implementation of a number of joint projects. The names of the project may vary from year to year: the one we are currently implementing is called Giving First-Hand Information. However, the idea consists in the following: to contribute to the Armenian and Azerbaijani societies’ receipt of first hand information in the conditions of quite a harsh blockade, alienation and actual war, to help neighbors hear each other and understand that they perhaps have more similarities than differences.

When we were just launching this project, we had quite a lot of doubts, wondering whether it would be successful or not. Would we manage to find a newspaper that would publish at least something? Would we be able to find people who would agree to be interviewed and to agree for the interview to be published in Armenia and Azerbaijan the next day? But almost 10 years have already passed, and the two organizations – Region Research Center and the Institute for Peace and Democracy , headed by Laura Baghdasaryan and Leyla Yunusova, respectively – have withstood the test of time, and this project is now on and is a success.

This year we are launching a new website onto which we will post the larger part of the materials, yielded and accumulated in this time period. Both our nations have lived in peace for over a millennium, and they have often supported each other rather than fought against each other. Unfortunately, today school textbooks in both Armenia and Azerbaijan educate children in the spirit of rejection and hostility. We need a lot of time in order for the two nations to remember that today they are discrediting our common, peaceful and creative history.

----------------------------------------------

About Institute of Peace and Democracy

The Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPD) was founded in 1995. Since 1995 it has been functioning as a non-governmental, apolitical and non-commercial organization (NGO). In 1997 IPD founded the Azerbaijan Campaign to Ban Landmines (ACBL) that has become part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). In 2001 IPD founded the first and until now the only Women’s Crisis Center in Azerbaijan (WCC).

The Institute for Peace and Democracy consists of five departments:

1. The Human Rights Department:

- conducts studies on the situation with human rights and democratic freedoms in Azerbaijan, focusing on the issue of political prisoners, freedom of speech and assembly, protection from torture, inhuman treatment and so on.

2. The State and Society Department:

- monitors the judicial system,

- and Azerbaijan’s compliance with its commitments before the Council of Europe, the EU and International Conventions it has joined.

3. Conflict Studies and Migration Department:

- studies the issues of the security and integration of South Caucasus countries,

- the prospects of the resolution of the Karabakh conflict,

- the role of Islam in the political life of the society, and

- migration processes in Azerbaijan and in the other countries in the region.

4. Women’s Rights Department:

- studies and assists the victims of domestic and sexual violence and human trafficking victims;

- the Women’s Crisis Center was created in 2001, on the basis of the Women’s Rights Department, which has assisted 11 thousand women ever since its foundation to 2011.

5. Youth Department:

- studies issues of education, and

- the percentage proportion of young people, being educated in Western democracies and in the Muslim East.

IPD conducts research and publishes the results of the popular science research projects on issues in contemporary Azerbaijan and Caucasian countries, holds scientific and practical conferences and seminars for human rights advocates in Russia and the countries of South Caucasus and Central Asia.

IPD cooperates with international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International (AI), the World Organization against Torture (OMCT), Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC), the International Human Rights Organization Front Line (FL), as well as international organizations of women’s rights advocates (AWID, UAF, and so on).

IPD cooperates with civil society institutes in Armenia on a permanent basis.

Since November 1, 2004, IPD has become a member of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Also see www.tt-ipd.info