Women Challenging Gender Norms and Patriarchal Values in Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Across the South Caucasus 46
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Caucasus Edition Journal of Conflict Transformation CHALLENGING GENDER NORMS, DEALING WITH THE PAST, AND PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT Community-Driven Conflict Transformation in the South Caucasus Caucasus Edition: Journal of Conflict Transformation Caucasus Edition Volume 3, Issue 1 2018 Volume 3 | Issue 1 CHALLENGING GENDER NORMS, DEALING WITH THE PAST, AND PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT Community-Driven Conflict Transformation in the South Caucasus Editors: Philip Gamaghelyan, Sevil Huseynova, Maria Karapetyan, Pınar Sayan Tbilisi 2018 © Caucasus Edition: Journal of Conflict Transformation ISSN 2155-5478 1 2 This publication has been produced in the framework of the project “Joint Platform for Realistic Peace in the South Caucasus” of the Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation in partnership with the Center for Independent Social Research – Berlin. The Imagine Center is an independent, non-political organization that is dedicated to positively transforming relations and laying foundations for lasting and sustainable peace in conflict- torn societies. www.imaginedialogue.com, [email protected] The Center for Independent Social Research – Berlin (CISR-Berlin) is a non- governmental organization focused on social research, civil society development and education in cooperation with Eastern Europe and post-Soviet states. www.cisr-berlin.org, [email protected] The project “Joint Platform for Realistic Peace in the South Caucasus” is funded by ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) / Funding program zivik with resources provided by the German Federal Foreign Office. 3 4 In This Issue From the Editorial Team 6 A Communitarian Peace Agenda for the South Caucasus: Supporting Everyday Peace Practices 8 Vadim Romashov, Nuriyya Guliyeva, Tatia Kalatozishvili, Lana Kokaia Women Challenging Gender Norms and Patriarchal Values in Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation across the South Caucasus 46 Milena Abrahamyan, Parvana Mammadova, Sophio Tskhvariashvili Working Through the Past in the Shadow of the Present: The Cases of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey 72 Nisan Alıcı, Arpi Grigoryan, Elchin Karimov The Environment, Human Rights, and Conflicts in the South Caucasus and Turkey: Transboundary Water Cooperation as a Mean to Conflict Transformation 107 Jeyhun Veliyev, Tsira Gvasalia, Sofya Manukyan Meet the New Normal: Community-Driven Clean Energy Partnership and Regional Cooperation Between Turkey and Armenia 141 Yaprak Aydın, Suren Sargsyan Beyond NGOs: Decolonizing Peacebuilding and Human Rights 157 Sona Dilanyan, Aia Beraia, Hilal Yavuz Acronyms and Abbreviations 174 Authors 176 5 From the Editorial Team The analysis of conflicts in the South Caucasus and strategies for their transformation have traditionally been conducted from political and economic prisms. This issue of the Caucasus Edition: Journal of Conflict Transformation defies that approach. Leaving aside the recent political development in the South Caucasus, which are discussed in the Journal's second issue of 2018, the co-authors here take a proactive approach and put the spotlight on feminist, communitarian, and environmental approaches to conflict and peace. The issue is produced in the framework of the project "Joint Platform for Realistic Peace in the South Caucasus" of the Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation in partnership with the Center for Independent Social Research – Berlin. The issue is co-authored by 18 journalists, analysts, and social scientists from the South Caucasus, as well as Turkey and Russia that have jointly engaged in dialogue and visioning, analysis and reflection for the development and advocacy of a common vision, strategy, and action for regional peace and conflict transformation. The paper "A Communitarian Peace Agenda for the South Caucasus: Supporting Everyday Peace Practices " by Vadim Romashov, Nuriyya Guliyeva, Lana Kokaia, and Tatia Kalatozishvili opens the issue and critiques the (neo-)liberal approaches to peace and proposes communitarian peace as an alternative – a shift from building peace to supporting peace, where peace and conflict are understood not as linear opposites but as concomitant processes. In "Women Challenging Gender Norms and Patriarchal Values in Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation across the South Caucasus", the co-authors Milena Abrahamyan, Parvana Mammadova, and Sophio Tskhvariashvili look at the ways in which women's peacebuilding and conflict focused organizations and groups in the South Caucasus challenge and/or reproduce gender roles and patriarchal values in their work within peacebuilding. The paper "Working Through the Past in the Shadow of the Present: The Cases of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey" by Nisan Alıcı, Arpi Grigoryan, and Elchin Karimov examines how the civil society actors in Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan understand and instrumentalize transitional justice for dealing with the past in conflict contexts internally and externally. In "The Environment, Human Rights, and Conflicts in the South Caucasus and Turkey: Transboundary Water Cooperation as a Mean to Conflict Transformation", Jeyhun Veliyev, Tsira Gvasalia, and Sofya Manukyan focus on environmental issues in the context of conflicts as a human rights concern. They conclude that environmental cooperation can become a tool for dialogue and conflict 6 transformation in the South Caucasus, even in the absence of political resolutions to conflicts. Building on the topic of environmental cooperation, in "Meet the New Normal: Community-Driven Clean Energy Partnership and Regional Cooperation Between Turkey and Armenia", Yaprak Aydın and Suren Sargsyan discuss the success story of solar energy bringing together citizens of Armenia and Turkey. The issue concludes with the paper "Beyond NGOs: Decolonizing Peacebuilding and Human Rights" by Sona Dilanyan, Aia Beraia, and Hilal Yavuz who return to the topic of the critical assessment of colonization of peacebuilding and women's rights raised by the opening two papers and propose strategies for advancing the voice and leadership by those directly impacted by violent structures of nationalism and patriarchy. The editorial team and all the co-authors express their deepest gratitude to ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) and the German Federal Foreign Office for making this collaboration and publication possible through their support of the project "Joint Platform for Realistic Peace in the South Caucasus". Editorial Team of the issue: Philip Gamaghelyan, Sevil Huseynova, Maria Karapetyan, Pınar Sayan. 7 A Communitarian Peace Agenda for the South Caucasus: Supporting Everyday Peace Practices Vadim Romashov1, Nuriyya Guliyeva, Tatia Kalatozishvili, Lana Kokaia This paper critiques the (neo-)liberal approaches to peace and proposes communitarian peace as an alternative. The paper problematizes how the recent shift of international peacebuilding to the local and the grassroots has in reality turned into an obsession with civil society understood strictly in terms of non- governmental organizations (NGOs), ultimately reproducing hierarchies and depriving communities of their voice and agency. Following this critique, the paper presents an alternative approach – a shift from building peace to supporting peace, where peace and conflict are understood not as linear opposites but as concomitant processes. By ethnographic interpretations of three cases of multicultural coexistence in the South Caucasus region, namely the Armenian-Azerbaijani co- existence in the Marneuli district, Muslims of Azerbaijani and Iranian origins with Georgian Christians in the village of Gombori, and Georgians of the Gal/i region with Abkhazians, the paper exemplifies the communitarian approach in practice. These cases demonstrate that peace happens as a process of negotiations and a search for situated consensuses on the differences and hierarchies among community members. Finally, the paper advocates for the inclusion of non-linear and interdisciplinary methods of dealing with conflicts. In order to catch up with the evolving area of critical peace and conflict research, peace-supporting activities also should incorporate ideas and perspectives from other fields such as anthropology, ethnography, political geography, psychology, etc., and that might introduce fresh insights on how to support peace. 1 The author would like to thank Angel Iglesias Ortiz for his valuable comments on the conceptual part of this paper. A Communitarian Peace Agenda for the South Caucasus: Supporting Everyday Peace Practices Introduction Beyond its rims, the South Caucasus is often viewed as a zone of conflicts rather than peace. Various international organizations and particular Western2 governments have initiated peacebuilding enterprises in this region. Their active involvement is usually welcomed by local NGOs that reassure international donors to continue their investments in regional peace initiatives. However, the remaining high tensions between various social, political, ethnic, and religious groups in the South Caucasus may indicate that these initiatives have not proved to be enough effective. At the same time, the international peacebuilding interveners continue to overlook the existing local peace practices that can inform about peace (already effective albeit concomitant to conflict) better than the 'blueprints' of peace projects brought from outside. The fundamental ontological limitation of the self-styled peacebuilding initiatives is that they are aimed at achieving a peace in a global community with a consent