Author: Jhanna Virabian

Military posts along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border (Photo: Office of the RA Ombudsman, November 16)

YEREVAN—The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia has announced that a meeting between the border demarcation commissions of Armenia and Azerbaijan will take place on November 30. 

The meeting will be held along the shared border of the two countries, in the Tavush region of Armenia and the Kazakh region of Azerbaijan. The announcement not only specified the date and location but also established that representatives from both nations would convene without an intermediary, allowing for direct talks between the two countries.

Before the final announcement today, on November 23 the Armenian Foreign Ministry had called an agreement to hold such a meeting preliminary. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baku released a statement on the same day that the news broke, confirming the finalization of this agreement, thereby paving the way for direct negotiations.

Armenian National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan suggested that a peace treaty with Azerbaijan could materialize within 15 days if Azerbaijani authorities demonstrate genuine political will. Simonyan highlighted that the sides have broadly agreed on most key issues, focusing particularly on international principles. Although he declined to delve into specifics, citing potential harm to the peace process, he said that if there were eight points under deliberation, seven had been agreed upon. Emphasizing Armenia’s stance, Simonyan stated firmly that Armenia has nothing further to concede in the negotiations.

Meanwhile, a senior Azerbaijani official dismissed the possibility of future negotiations facilitated by the European Union or the United States. Hikmet Hajiyev, the foreign policy advisor to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, emphasized that the essence of peace lies within the region itself, rather than in Washington, Brussels or Paris. Speaking to reporters, Hajiyev said that Armenia should recognize the core foundations of peace as originating within the region.

This development marks a shift from previous attempts at mediation. Previously, Aliyev declined meetings mediated by Western entities, citing reasons such as the absence of an invitation to Turkish President Erdogan to a meeting in Granada, Spain or concerns over statements made by EU chief diplomat Josep Borel during discussions regarding the Artsakh conflict. 

Azerbaijan recently decided to decline a meeting proposed to be held between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan on November 20 in Washington in reaction to comments made by U.S. State Department official James O’Brien, which Azerbaijan deemed as biased. O’Brien emphasized that the restoration of normal U.S. relations with Azerbaijan hinges on progress towards peace following a military assault that resulted in the displacement of Armenians from Artsakh. The Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced what it perceived as a one-sided approach. As a response, they indicated that high-level visits from the U.S. to Azerbaijan were deemed inappropriate. 

In response to Azerbaijan’s rejection of Western mediation, Armenia has maintained a consistent disregard for Moscow’s proposals for meetings. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan notably abstained from participating in international summits facilitated by the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), expressing dissatisfaction with the organizations’ responses to Azerbaijan’s invasion of Armenian territory.

Amidst these refusals, Azerbaijan proposed to either select a mutually agreeable capital or organize a meeting at the border for direct bilateral talks. Armenia opted for a border meeting focused solely on demarcation discussions, giving in to Azerbaijan’s demand.

This shift towards direct negotiations without intermediaries is viewed with skepticism in Armenia. Some analysts have expressed concern that Azerbaijan, led by President Aliyev, might use this direct contact as a means of applying pressure, avoiding commitments or seeking more concessions. Tigran Grigoryan from Civilnet argued that shifting from Western-mediated talks might nullify previously agreed principles and grant Azerbaijan greater leverage in negotiations due to a power imbalance. The absence of mediators could hinder the implementation of new agreements, leading to different interpretations of terms by both parties. Furthermore, the shift to a bilateral format may sideline the issue of guarantees and implementation mechanisms for the treaty, a matter Armenia has considered crucial.

Aliyev’s previous statements, particularly those demanding that Armenia accept his conditions under the threat of unilaterally determining the border, raise apprehensions in Armenia regarding the true intentions behind Azerbaijan’s insistence on direct negotiations.

There are concerns among analysts in Yerevan that this shift towards direct talks might be a trap, allowing Azerbaijan to exert pressure and possibly sidestep or avoid the commitments made in previous negotiations facilitated by Western mediators. This development, although seemingly positive in terms of direct engagement, raises uncertainties and skepticism about the future direction of negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Recent statements by Prime Minister Pashinyan have illuminated potential discussions regarding a territorial exchange between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Pashinyan’s remarks hint at the evolving landscape of negotiations and the future of relations between the two nations.

In one statement, Pashinyan questioned Azerbaijan’s commitment to signing a peace agreement based on previously agreed principles. These principles, as outlined by Pashinyan, encompass mutual recognition of territorial integrity, specific land area recognitions for both countries based on Soviet-era calculations and the establishment of regional communications under notions of sovereignty and equality. However, it appears that these principles articulated by Pashinyan have not gained traction or acknowledgment from Baku.

In European circles, these principles have garnered attention, having been discussed with European representatives before being presented in Washington. Attempts by Paris and Brussels to engage Azerbaijan in these discussions have gone unanswered, with Baku displaying a consistent disregard for these efforts, including recent disregard for Washington’s diplomatic endeavors.

Of all the ongoing negotiations, the only point under consideration between Baku and Yerevan remains the exchange of territories. Specifically, discussions involve the exchange of historic enclaves, notably the Tigranashen settlement in Armenia and the Artsvashen enclave in Azerbaijan.

This potential exchange has raised concerns about the strategic implications for Armenia, particularly since the Tigranashen settlement serves as a crucial route to Tbilisi. However, the proposed exchange seems disproportionately unfavorable for Armenia. Pashinyan’s adherence to the aforementioned principles has created a dilemma in which Armenia risks isolation and strategic cut-offs if territorial exchanges proceed as discussed.

The possibility of a looming agreement on territorial exchanges raises speculation about Pashinyan’s intentions within Armenia. Mikayel Zolyan, in his article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, predicted that Pashinyan’s strategy might involve early elections seeking a mandate to shift Armenia’s foreign policy orientation by distancing from Russia and strengthening European ties. However, this anticipated shift might also include maintaining economic ties with Russia while attempting to reorient Armenia’s foreign policy trajectory toward the West.

As Azerbaijan keeps a watchful eye, Zolyan speculated that it might wait for elections in Armenia to conclude before engaging with a potentially stronger Pashinyan administration. Azerbaijan’s strategic stance in this regard remains uncertain, although the prospects of diplomatic negotiations regarding Armenia’s southern province Syunik loom in the background.

Amidst these developments, Pashinyan’s statements about enclaves seem to have garnered limited interest, signifying a potential negotiation pitfall initiated by Pashinyan himself. The once inviolable territorial integrity of Armenia appears increasingly fragile, with the loss of Artsakh marking the first significant setback in a sequence of unfolding events.

“Where Do We Go From Here? Genocide Education in the 21st Century” Symposium at Rowan University, New Jersey

TORONTO—On November 10, 2023, the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (A Division of the Zoryan Institute) and the Rowan Center for the Study of Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, hosted the symposium, Where Do We Go From Here? Genocide Education in the 21st Century at Rowan University in New Jersey.

Over the past few years, the editors of Genocide Studies International (GSI), an academic journal owned, operated and sponsored by the Zoryan Institute and published by the University of Toronto Press (UTP), started questioning the effectiveness of genocide education today, given the prevalence of human rights abuses, the polarization of societies, and the global rise in hate-based violence, authoritarianism, and a general apathy from the international community. To address this question, the editors conceptualized a symposium to bring together leading scholars and educators of North America in the field of Genocide Studies to discuss the shortcomings of genocide education, what “good” genocide education means, and how we can begin to chart a path forward.

From l-r: Dr. Alex Alvarez, Dr. Arthur Anyaduba, Dr. Joyce Apsel, Dr. Deborah Dwork (front), Dr. Jim Waller, Dr. Jennifer Rich (front), Dr. Björn Krondorfer, Kate Simola, Megan Reid, Dr. Khatchig Mouradian and Dr. Henry Theriault

With the troubling times we face globally today, including the invasion of Ukraine, the blockade of the Berdzor (Lachin) Corridor and dissolution of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), the Gaza conflict, the civil war in Libya and the mass killings in Darfur, just to name a few, the timing for this symposium could not have been any more poignant. The ability to be able to make sense of, understand and critically analyze the world around us has never been more crucial.

Quality education is at the center of this, and this symposium acted as a starting point to opening important discussions surrounding these issues in a closed, safe space with some of the leading voices in genocide education.

The primary objective of genocide education has been commonly perceived as a means of raising awareness about the heinous crime in order to mobilize masses to help prevent genocides and atrocities of the future. Yet, despite the efforts of scholars, educators and academic institutions like the Zoryan Institute, the famous saying of “never again” has proven to be an empty slogan.

Prof. Deborah Dwork, Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center at CUNY, opened the day’s discussion by situating the symposium and the conversation in a post-October 7 world. She highlighted the need to explore and perhaps redefine what the actual goals of genocide education are, noting that if the objective with this education thus far has been prevention, then education is clearly failing. Dr. Dwork commented: “Learning about genocide doesn’t have a moral or political advantage, it rather helps us understand the world around us differently.”

Dr. Joyce Apsel, Academic Board Member of the Zoryan Institute, Course Director of the Institute’s Genocide and Human Rights University Program (GHRUP), and Professor of Humanities in Liberal Studies at New York University, discussed the need for genocide education to be studied through a human rights lens, which she framed as “human rights” and “human rights wrongs.” Prof. Apsel also raised the need to avoid framing genocide as a singular event, but as a process that continues to impact societies long after the height of the violence ends.

Dr. Jim Waller, a faculty member of GHRUP and the Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice at the University of Connecticut, cemented this notion by stating that the word “post-genocide” should be removed from the academic vocabulary, as there is no clear end date to the impacts of genocide.

Other key takeaways from the symposium included the importance of considering the positionality of the educator, the significance of introducing genocide education across various disciplines, and ways to garner empathy from students and make genocide education hit closer to home.

Prof. Jennifer Rich, Academic Board Member of the Zoryan Institute and co-editor of GSI, and the Director of the Masters of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Education, was the lead coordinator and the moderator for the symposium. When asked about the key take-aways of the symposium, she said: “The rich exchange of ideas that took place at the symposium was an important, exciting first step. I am certain that there will be any number of followup conversations as we grapple with our core question of, ‘Where do we go from here?’”

Reflecting on the discussions had and the daunting task ahead of improving the future of genocide education, Dr. Adam Muller, co-editor of GSI and the Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies graduate programs at the University of Manitoba, quoted notable author Willard Van Orman Quine, stating that we are “rebuilding the ship while sailing on the water.” This quote seems to perfectly summarize the position we are in today, addressing present day turmoil while simultaneously needing to repair genocide education, or “the ship,” without being able to fully tear it down and start anew.

In reflecting on the symposium, the Zoryan Institute is currently confronting the following foundational questions for its own work: How do we effectively address major conflicts within classrooms and public forums while navigating the complexities of censorship and potential repercussions for open discourse? How has the failure of the international community to prevent human rights atrocities, and the indifference for these crimes, shaped how we approach genocide education going forward? How are we able to rebuild the ship, while keeping the boat afloat during turbulent waters?

From l-r: Dr. Henry Theriault, Dr. Deborah Dwork, Dr. Arthur Anyaduba, Dr. Joyce Apsel, Dr. Jennifer Rich, Dr. Jim Waller, Dr. Björn Krondorfer, Dr. Khatchig Mouradian

This symposium will act as the first of many discussions on this topic as we grapple with the big overarching questions that were left unanswered. While exploring these fundamental questions, and others raised during the symposium, the Institute questions whether it should redirect its objectives for its work from prevention, towards promoting equity, tolerance, understanding and reconciliation through education, scholarship and research.

All eight panelists will prepare academic papers to be featured in an upcoming special issue of GSI, which is expected to be released in Fall 2024.

This article is the third in a series about the fall of Artsakh, its humanitarian consequences and relief efforts, based on Lillian Avedian’s on-the-ground reporting from Armenia in October 2023.

On her final day in Artsakh, when virtually its entire population had fled following a brutal attack by Azerbaijan, Kristin Balayan prepared a meal for the employees of her cafe. She ordered them to deliver some bread she had baked to the local hospital, and in their absence, she cooked in her cafe Tumanyan in Artsakh’s capital city Stepanakert for the last time. The meal had the somber, religious quality of the last supper, and the group offered toasts and broke bread as they prepared to leave behind their beloved cafe to an unknown fate. Balayan left the table settings from that final meal intact, in hopes that if Azerbaijani soldiers entered the cafe and saw a table filled with plates and food, they would not destroy it. 

Balayan was among the few to stay in Stepanakert until September 29, 10 days after Azerbaijan launched its full scale assault on Artsakh, or Nagorno-Karabakh, triggering the mass displacement of the region’s Armenians. She prepared free meals for those who remained. After nine months of a devastating blockade, food was scarce, so she got creative. Lacking flour, she baked lavash bread using bran, or “what we feed pigs,” as she disdainfully called it. People donated whatever food they had left in their pantries–“half a bottle of olive oil, some sugar, some noodles,” Balayan recounted–to her cafe before embarking on the long drive to Armenia.

Balayan’s story is representative of Artsakh’s Armenian women, who learned to stretch their resourcefulness as cooks to its limits under blockade. In times of crisis, the responsibility of adapting to new social and financial challenges in order to protect the health and wellbeing of the family often falls on women, who traditionally are the homemakers and family caretakers. They become problem solvers, crafting solutions with minimal material resources besides their own creativity and care. Following the fall of Artsakh to Azerbaijan and the refugee crisis, Armenian women have also adopted the roles of humanitarian aid workers, continuing to utilize their skills to feed and sustain their communities. 

From September 19-20, Azerbaijan launched an assault on Artsakh to capture the territory by force. The de facto Armenian authorities, which had governed the region since the first Artsakh war in the 1990s, were forced to agree to disband and disarm the Artsakh Defense Army. Within a week, about 100,000 people, virtually the region’s entire Armenian population, fled to Armenia. The attack followed a nine-month blockade imposed by Azerbaijan that deprived Artsakh of much of its food supply and basic goods. By the time of the attack, fresh produce, dry goods, fuel, medicine and hygiene products were almost nonexistent. Armenia now faces the humanitarian challenges of meeting the basic needs of the Artsakh refugees and securing long-term housing, employment and social services for the traumatized population.

Bread prepared from rice (Photo: Lillian Avedian)

Faced with the impossible task of feeding their families under a blockade, Artsakh’s women created solutions, crafting recipes with whatever fell into their hands. They made coffee, Armenians’ drink of choice that is always offered to guests, by grinding barley and combining it with salt. Each household developed its own recipe for baking bread, another staple of the Armenian diet, without flour. One woman, the 36-year-old mother of teenagers Ani and Babken, showed me a picture of a recipe she invented, combining rice with yeast and salt to mimic the consistency of bread. “It’s tiring and stressful, when your hands are empty, and your children are hungry and ask for food, wondering what I will give them,” she said. 

In the latter months of the blockade, when food and basic necessities were especially scarce, the government distributed vouchers for procuring bread. People stood in line for hours, sometimes well past midnight, to take a couple of pieces of bread home to their families. On extremely hot summer days, people, especially children and the elderly, frequently fainted while waiting in long lines. 

The mother of young children Agnessa and Sashka invented ersatz laundry detergent by baking bars of soap until they reached the consistency of jelly and combining them with salt. “We don’t know if our clothes were washed or not,” she chuckled. The young mother is full of jokes. She poked fun at the absurd, previously unimaginable steps her family was forced to adopt in order to survive. It appeared to me as her mechanism to cope with the unrelenting stress of the upheavals and uncertainty of the past year.

She filled my lap with vouchers, featuring brightly colored images of fruit, vegetables and dry foods. The government distributed the vouchers for people to obtain limited quantities of food from the state supply. She never got to use the vouchers, because there was no food left to procure with them. She kept the small, square pieces of paper, because her children enjoy playing with the vivid images. “This is vermicelli. This is rice,” she counted, laughing as she held up the vouchers one by one. “We would look at the vouchers and get full. That’s how we lived. We lived through photos. We lived by tricking ourselves.”

Just like their mother, Agnessa and Sashka were quick to smile. Sashka sprinted around the room, his laughter echoing off of the high ceilings. I wondered whether their mother’s humor and capacity for imagination had protected them from grasping the difficulties facing their family and absorbing stress and grief.

I met the family at the shelter of the Goris Development Foundation, a nonprofit that empowers women to find work and engage in public life. The organization has turned a large room, reminiscent of a gym or a banquet hall, into a shelter for displaced people from Artsakh. I sat cross-legged on the floor, in the middle of a cluster of beds, where women gathered to sit and speak with me. Agnessa approached me every few minutes with a drawing made of colored pencils or a card game, asking to play. As I was leaving, she gave me three presents: a scribbled drawing, a pencil and a plastic Easter egg concealing a walnut. 

Ruzanna Torozyan, executive director of the foundation, warned that the displaced Armenians of Artsakh are struggling with severe health issues due to the lack of nutritious food during the blockade. This was exacerbated by limited access to doctors or medical services, since the resources of hospitals and medical institutions were depleted by the absence of medicine, supplies and fuel. She advised that medical experts should conduct research in the coming months to determine the health needs of the displaced population.

Several of the Armenians from Artsakh I met told me that Russian peacekeepers delivered food to Artsakh from Armenia during the blockade and sold it to the local population at higher prices. Following the end of the 2020 Artsakh War, a Russian peacekeeping contingent was deployed to Artsakh. During the blockade, peacekeepers sold a kilogram of sugar for 5,000 drams, about $12 USD, to the local Armenian population. Bottles of olive oil were sold between 5,000-10,000 drams each, up to $25 USD. A pack of cigarettes cost 15,000 drams, or $37 USD. Ani and Babken’s mom told me that a pack of cigarettes is usually sold for 120 drams. “The peacekeepers made good money,” she scoffed.

During periods of upheaval and uncertainty, women, who according to traditional social norms are looked to as the pillars of the family, draw on immense reserves of creativity and resourcefulness to keep their families alive. The women of Artsakh, in addition to the standard expectations of cooking, cleaning and running the household, carried the added burden and responsibility of learning to prepare food, while their home was under the grip of an unrelenting blockade on food and supplies. Their work multiplied, while their capacity for problem solving and invention was on full display. 

To keep her cafe running, Balayan relied on one of the rare foods in easy supply that grows abundantly in Artsakh – chickpeas. She made hummus the centerpiece of Tumanyan’s menu, which she blended without the costly olive oil. She mixed jam with bran to bake cookies without sugar or flour. “Throughout the blockade, our closest clients would knock on the door and enter. They called us mom and dad. We were like family,” Balayan recalled. 

Balayan’s qualifications are endless – in addition to establishing a cafe, she is also the founder of MilaGri, a foundation that supports children with special needs. She opened Tumanyan to use her skills as a home chef for her husband and two children to raise funds to launch a kindergarten. She also held sessions at Tumanyan for kids with special needs to connect with psychologists, speech therapists and rehabilitation services. 

Balayan carries her immense love and longing for her abandoned cafe. “Our most expensive loss is the soul we put into the cafe,” she reflected. She hopes to open a similar cafe in Yerevan, with the same layout – a lush yard with canopies for outdoor seating where she can host community events and educational services for children. Her loyal clients have been pressing her to open a new cafe. “They keep asking me, when are you going to make hummus again?” she shared with a laugh.

While she is still grieving Tumanyan, Balayan has drawn on her endless reserve of resourcefulness and resilience to commence work in Armenia. She has been working for the World Central Kitchen, an international organization that provides hot meals in the aftermath of humanitarian crises. When I met her at the World Central Kitchen operation at the Armenian General Benevolent Union headquarters in Yerevan, she had been working since six in the morning. “I can’t rest. If I don’t work, I’ll go crazy. A normal person would go crazy in these circumstances, so we’re not normal,” she said wryly. 

World Central Kitchen has recruited 18 women from Artsakh, including Balayan, to work for their operation to prepare and deliver hot food to displaced people from Artsakh living in Armenia. Globally renowned chef and restaurateur Aline Kamakian has been in Armenia since the end of September as one of the leaders of the operation. She and the women from Artsakh share a common bond – in the midst of chaos and destruction, they learned how to cook food with little means, and they used those skills in service of their communities.

Volunteers with World Central Kitchen (Photo: Lillian Avedian)

Kamakian’s Lebanon-based Armenian restaurant Mayrig was destroyed by the devastating Beirut blast in August 2020. She rapidly mobilized her staff to rebuild the beloved restaurant and prepare thousands of free hot meals for Beirut’s residents. “I cooked with the leftovers of Mayrig restaurant. With the wood that was broken, I made a fire. We didn’t have plates. We were in a situation where there was nothing,” Kamakian said. 

Whether cooking free meals after a disastrous explosion or mass displacement, or inventing recipes under blockade, Armenians have learned to cook with limited resources and immense creativity. Armenian women have been the centerpiece of this project, keeping their families and communities alive in their roles as home chefs, restaurateurs or aid workers.  

This theme is woven throughout Armenian history. Kamakian’s grandmother was eight years old when she left Musa Ler, the site of famed resistance against the genocidal Ottoman army in 1915. Exiled from her ancestral lands, she relied on her memories of the smells and tastes of the comfort dishes she grew up with to recreate the recipes of the traditional cuisine of Musa Ler. In Kamakian’s words: “We’ve become creators of food from nothing.”