Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Platform presented at int’l forum in Egypt

Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Platform presented at int’l forum in Egypt
# 10 May 2017 11:42 (UTC +04:00)

A regional forum named “Youth Participation and Civic Engagement” was held in Alexandria, Egypt from April 30 to May 5.

The forum was co-organized by the Swedish Institute Alexandria and Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute, APA reported.

Youth from the EU-MENA region were invited to the forum. The idea of this conference was to bring youth and political activists from Europe and MENA together to discuss the forms of enhancing political participation in pluralistic societies with an aim to create a network of young people with shared values across the region.

The participants of this forum were active members of political parties, students and scholars conducting research in the area of Political Parties, Political participation or extremism. Among the list of participants were also MP's from Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia, politicians from Lebanon and government representatives from Egypt, including the Director of the Media Office of the President of Egypt, Dr. Rasha Allam.

Within the framework of the forum there was held a presentation of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Platform for Peace. The presentation was made by Witold Olejnik (Poland), a peace ambassador of the platform.

Witold Olejnik underlined main principles and described the fragility of situation is South Caucasus to people from Europe and MENA. Participants had a chance to get more familiar with dynamics of the region, to find out the necessity of peaceful consolidation of this conflict and possible threat of spillover and its consequences for whole Europe and Middle East. They had shown their interest and expressed hope for expeditious resolution achieved in with regards to international law and negotiations.

For the purpose of contributing to a peaceful settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Armenia-Azerbaijan Platform for Peace was established on December 6, 2016. The Platform is an initiative of the citizens of Azerbaijan and Armenia who wish to contribute to the peaceful settlement of the conflict.

The initiative on the creation of the Platform has generated the interest of the international community as well as attracted the high level of public attention in both conflicting states. A large number of well-known experts highly appreciated this initiative and stressed the very special role of the above-mentioned peacekeeping initiative in the process of the peaceful settlement of the conflict.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.

A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.

The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.

Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the CSCE (OSCE after the Budapest summit held in December 1994) Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.

Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, the US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.

Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nagorno Garabagh

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