KARABAKH NEEDS WORKABLE SELF-GOVERNMENT FOR BOTH COMMUNITIES
Jamil Bayramov
news.az
Jan 20 2010
Azerbaijan
Erkin Gadirli An international law expert Erkin Gadirli comments to
News.Az on the major challenges for peace in Nagorno-Karabakh.
What are the chances of the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities
peacefully co-existing in Nagorno-Karabakh?
Peaceful co-existence is necessary, but by itself it cannot provide a
sustainable solution to the problem. It is important to differentiate
between eliminating all the actual consequences of the military
conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh on the one hand, and dealing with
potential systemic conflicts in the future regional autonomy on
the other. The former is a matter of security in preventing future
violence, while the latter connotes management of social conflicts
in and between the constituent communities of Nagorno-Karabakh.
It is also crucial to keep in mind that solving the security aspect
of the problem is not and should not be a goal in itself, strange as
it may sound. In fact, practically speaking, security is the easiest
component of the solution package. It will require a major political
agreement, international guarantees and, possibly, internationally
assigned peace-keeping forces. However, the main goal is to design
a system of self-governance in Nagorno-Karabakh that will be fair,
stable and workable. That, of course, implies all the prerequisites
of genuine democracy. It is this component that seems to have been
underestimated. It is high time to open an inclusive discourse on
this overshadowed aspect of the problem.
Peaceful co-existence is a sound notion, only if it is viewed as
part of the larger concept of the "mutual self-governance" of both
constituent communities of Nagorno-Karabakh. Although this concept
itself stems from the as yet undefined "higher possible status
of autonomy", it still deserves a separate in-depth analysis. In
other words, it is useful to view mutual self-governance as an
analytically independent subject. Unfortunately, the dominant
tendency to territorialize the dispute hinders the understanding of
differences between autonomy for the region and mutual self-governance
for the people.
I firmly believe that both communities in Nagorno-Karabakh will
re-establish themselves to constitute a democratically governed region,
which can even become, if not a model, then at least a trigger for
the further democratization of Azerbaijan and Armenia. My belief is
visionary, rather than prescriptive. Much still needs to be openly
debated.