OPEN SOCIETY IS OPEN TO EVERYONE
Lusine Musaelyan

KarabakhOpen
20-03-2007 16:31:41

The Open Society NGO was set up in 2005. The coordinator of the
organization Naira Hayrumyan says the goal of the NGO is contained in
the name of the society – to promote an open society. Naira Hayrumyan
thinks in Karabakh the society is not open in two aspects. "The first
is the internal political aspect.

Usually we do not discuss the problems publicly which concern the
public, although this is what democracy implies. Decisions are made,
it is not important if they are good or bad decisions, which are not
discussed with people. We would like to fill in this gap. The second
is the foreign political aspect.

As an information unit, Karabakh is closed to many. The world has very
vague idea of what Karabakh is, and continues to think that the people
who live here are fighting all the time." Naira Hayrumyan says Open
Society works towards both directions. "As to the foreign situation, we
conduct public polls on urgent topics and discuss them in round-table
meetings and electronic forums," said Naira Hayrumyan. She underlined
the debate over the Karabakh settlement organized by the NGO after
the release of the reports of the International Crisis Group. "We
conducted a poll, large-scale debates on the reports and conveyed
the opinion of the Karabakh society to the international community
on the proposals of the mediators," Naira Hayrumyan said. "In order
to open Karabakh for the world information sphere our organization
set up the website with the help of which we
present Karabakh to the world the way it is in reality," said the
coordinator of the organization.

In answer to the question how the organization is sustained, Naira
Hayrumyan said: "We do not think that public activities require
immense funds.

Moreover, the members of the organization are people who are ready
to work without pay, they follow their principles. As to financing,
last year KarabakhOpen and a few other non-governmental media got
government assistance, which was spent on the English version of
the website. I hope this year government assistance will continue,
otherwise we will have to close the English version.

We got a small grant from the International Alert to set up the column
Third Sector in the framework of the Resource Center of Stepanakert.

We do the rest of the work on a voluntary basis," According to Naira
Hayrumyan, the members of the organization are mainly related to
journalism. Although the Open Society is open to everyone.