Private Peacemaking USIP-Assisted Peacemaking Projects of Nonprofit Organizations: Peaceworks: Publications: U.S. Institute of Peace

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May 1998

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Private Peacemaking USIP-Assisted Peacemaking Projects of Nonprofit Organizations

University Students and Women as Peace-Builders in the Transcaucasus

by Deborah K. Welsh

In 1992, the board of directors of the National Peace Foundation (NPF) responded to the request of several professional women in Armenia, including scholars and journalists, to arrange a meeting with their Azeri counterparts. At the time, the armed struggle over Nagorno Karabakh, the ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, was raging. Although the vision of these women had yet to be clearly defined, it was based on the premise that there must be actions women could take to ease the conflict situation between their two countries. The NPF leadership decided also to include women from Georgia in the meetings.

In 1994, in Washington, D.C., six women from each of the republics began what has become an ongoing dialogue. They agreed to meet, under ground rules stating that they would neither get bogged down in reciting historic offenses nor try to forge peace pacts. At the same time they would not ignore elements of the conflicts—issues of territorial rights, regional self-determination, refugees, prisoners of war—and might try to ameliorate some of them.

NPF board member Deborah Welsh, who had been presenting courses in “Negotiating in a Market Economy” in the region for several years, accepted the Armenians’ request and visited and interviewed potential peacebuilding agents among the Azeri, Georgian, and Armenian women in their home countries. Between 1992 and 1994, over the course of several trips to the region, Welsh interviewed more than forty women. NPF decided that those selected had to fall into one of the following categories. They had to be women of influence in scholarly, scientific, or other intellectual arenas; women who had served in policymaking positions; women involved with the new press agencies; or women who were willing to explore new kinds of relationships within the region. These interviews yielded what was to become the Transcaucasus Women’s Dialogue (TWD).

Cultivating a Safe Environment

The women from Azerbaijan and Armenia expressed considerable concern about their safety during the planned dialogues. These concerns were addressed in separate meetings in which each participant expressed her fears, such as “aggressive” behavior that would discourage civil interaction. The facilitator then suggested ways in which such an event might be handled which the women understood and accepted. The participants then tried to anticipate what the participants from the other country were likely to be fearing.

These delegation-specific discussions provided the first of several important changes of expectation as members discovered that the “other” participants were experiencing similar concerns. Recommended ground rules were expanded and accepted by all delegations.

Language, Interpretation, and Concepts

Before the first meeting in Washington, D.C., each country’s delegation met separately with Professor Welsh in a four-hour session during which the delegates translated into Russian a list of the most frequently used words, phrases, and concepts relating to dialogue and negotiation in hopes that a shared vocabulary might minimize misunderstanding. However, it became increasingly clear that even though Russian vocabulary was being used, understandings of the concepts often varied among the delegations. Nevertheless, this early process provided a language base on which the further work of the Transcaucasus Women’s Dialogue continues to depend.

Through visits to the homes and countries of the participants, and the meetings which developed the language for the dialogues, the facilitator realized how complex a barrier was raised by interethnic communication, both among the delegations and between the facilitator and the delegations. (In later meetings the barrier posed by class differences also became apparent.) The facilitator worked to uncover for the participants the subtleties and nuances involved in this kind of communication, and was able to alert the participants to cultural assumptions inherent in cross-cultural communication.

Goals and Objectives

From the very beginning the facilitators posed this question to the TWD: “What informal structures and resource networks need to be in place when peace is declared?” The facilitators’ objectives were to elicit from the participants, as individuals and as representatives of their countries, what components of civil society were necessary if the talents and expertise of women were to be made available upon the signing of official peace treaties.

The women had not had many previous opportunities with collaborative problem-solving. The dialogue process was so novel that it took a series of meetings before they were comfortable with it. In addition to the expected conflicts and disagreements among the delegations, there was also intra-delegation conflict and disagreements. A carefully nurtured transition from “visionaries and philosophers” to action-agents brought about major transformation in delegates’ perception of themselves and their capacity to affect the world. The most exciting continuing challenge is to explore how each delegate’s analytic and organizational talents can enrich those of the other participants.

Of course, the Transcaucasus has gone through enormous change since the TWD’s first meeting in 1994. Various degrees of democracy have evolved, along with some backsliding (as in the case of freedom of the press). Focus on the military situation has been largely replaced by concerns over the conditions of refugees and internally displaced persons. The drastic changes in the role of women in all three countries have, with good reason, alarmed the women of the dialogues. Women are now expected to accept work in conditions outside their previously protected cultural domains, conditions which are often suspect and humiliating to male family members. When this happens, the woman is in danger of losing her status in the family. Heavy economic burdens are falling increasingly on younger women. The increase in prostitution is a major method of holding families together, and the demands that force the younger women to accept this humiliating role have had a profound impact on the dignity and self-respect of the refugee community, as well as, by implication, polarizing the intraethnic cultures. Civil conflict still threatens, particularly when permanent residents must compete with refugees and displaced persons for scarce employment. And as urban and rural values clash, some may resort to violence to preserve what they perceive as traditional cultural values.

Women from all three countries face these complex issues, and as they struggle to address them, the delegates share information with each other, engaging in a functional approach to peace building.

Another important component of the TWD concept involves developing leadership training in conflict prevention for university students from the three countries. This training helps increase these students’ awareness of their responsibility for the region’s economic and social stability. The first two workshops, supported by the United States Institute of Peace, were held in 1997, in Tbilisi. Over 40 students from the region and from Crimea participated each week. Professors from the TWD countries—Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan—and from Ukraine, formed a joint team with Americans Deborah Welsh and Rebecca Chase to provide the training.

The students were placed in teams with one student from each country on each. They spent a week resolving disguised border disputes, hazardous waste disposal decisions, and performing exercises that increased their understanding of the need to develop relationships based on a “working trust” for regional economic and cultural survival. Their high energy level played a large part in the success of these workshops, as the students, already excited by the opportunity, and prepared by their professors for the intellectual and emotional adventures awaiting them, eagerly addressed their tasks. The professors, who had formerly studied the methodology and trained under Welsh in Yerevan and Baku, brought great richness to the workshops and contributed very significantly to their success.

One outcome of the Tbilisi workshops is a collaborative effort to develop a weekly children’s television program. Groups of students and several professors from Armenia and Azerbaijan plan to develop scenarios which focus on conflict prevention, tolerance-building and environmental protection, issues discussed and negotiated during the Tbilisi workshops. Joint meetings of the writers and puppet-masters are expected to be organized in Tbilisi.

Constraints and Successes

Problems of communication and of sustained funding seriously inhibit progress with these efforts. Those who are truly dedicated stay with the project through all the difficulties. But valuable insights and talent are lost when a large enough group cannot gather to plan for the future. At this time, e-mail and telephone communication are too expensive for exploring opportunities and brainstorming. But regular and sustained communication is essential to cross-cultural projects.

Despite these difficulties, the program has enabled participants to suspend their stereotypical perceptions of those from the other groups. The participants are committed to the continuation of the Transcaucasus Women’s Dialogue and its workshops on leadership in conflict prevention and management. It is clear that the young men and women who participated in the USIP-funded Tbilisi workshops will lead their region into a more stable and collegial civil society. In this one shared undertaking alone, the Transcaucasus Women’s Dialogue has, after four years, clearly proven its worth.

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