Working across multiple conflict divides in the former Soviet Union and beyond.
Combining local, regional, international expertise.
We have a long track record of working in Russia, the South Caucasus, Central Asia and Ukraine, with a particular focus on the Georgian-Abkhaz, Georgian-South Ossetian conflicts and the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorny Karabakh.
We work on a local, regional and international level facilitating exchange and interaction, in acknowledgment of both the specificities and the inter-related nature of the conflicts across the whole region.
Our experts also have experience working in Belarus, Western Balkans, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Vietnam.
Context
All conflict contexts are multi-dimensional, and regardless of the root causes they evolve over time as new elements – often invisible to the external eye – influence conflict dynamics. The post-soviet conflicts are no different in this respect, their roots deep in historical context, but erupting into violence as the political context changed. Civil wars and ethno-territorial conflicts were fought over status and self-determination as different nations and groups sought to preserve privileges or to protect national and cultural identity.
Whatever the historical drivers of conflict may have been, they have subsequently been written over with new layers of trauma, loss and displacement, injustice, and unresolved grievances rendering the conflicts intractable.
Rife with division, the region is the site of competing geo-political interests which are played out through political, economic and cultural means as well as military.
In such a context, it is important to understand the layered nature of conflict over time, the invisible undercurrents and the interrelation between local, regional and international conflict dynamics.
Our analysis and interventions aim to unpack these layers and put the human being at the heart of all conflict transformation work – both as perpetrators of conflict and as the main resource through which to build peace.