Armenia
The Frontline Club and Bertha Doc House Present: Intent to Destroy
Academy Award-nominated director Joe Berlinger’s, Intent to Destroy interrogates and scrutinises the diplomatic pressure, Hollywood censorship and the legacy of Turkish suppression that have together conspired to bury the horror of the Armenian Genocide.
The Soft Power of Diasporas
When people think of diaspora populations, their first thought tends to be of refugee populations, the migrant crisis, and communities fleeing conflict as a result of what’s reported in the media. However, this is only part of the story. Often these scattered populations across the globe continue to have an enormous impact on their homelands. The European Research Council has sponsored 5 years of extensive research and close to 500 first-hand interviews of displaced peoples in Europe, and what influences and impacts they continue to have on their homelands.
Short Film Screening and Discussion: Framing the Future of Water
A panel of professionals from a range of disciplines, including journalists and water experts, will come together for a unique event to talk about one of the biggest challenges facing our planet today – the global water crisis. The future of water isn’t a simple topic – it is vast and can often be overwhelming. During the discussion we will explore how this topic can be made accessible through the power of storytelling and film.
1915: The Last Survivors of the Armenian Genocide
By Anna Speyart ‘[Photography] isn’t necessarily about creating images; it’s about experiencing life and experiencing stories. Images are just a side effect.’
In the Picture with Diana Markosian: 1915 – My Armenia
A century ago, on the eve of World War I, there were two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, one and a half million of them were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country. In a new project, Armenian-American photographer Diana Markosian travelled to Armenia to meet survivors and to ask them about their last memories of their early home. She will be joining us in conversation with Fiona Rogers, global business development manager at Magnum Photos International & founder of Firecracker, to show her work and share the stories of the survivors she met who, 100 years on, still remember their home.
Falklands referendum results, UK-Russia talks, and a new Chinese President make for busy week ahead
By Jasper Wenban-Smith, international editor of ForesightNews. A round up of world news in the week ahead from journalist resource ForesightNews. Monday 11 March On Monday, a two-day referendum on the political status of the Falklands Islands wraps-up, with the results due that evening. The referendum is largely symbolic, since the islanders overwhelmingly favour retaining […]
Syria’s bloody conflict, fallout from North Korea’s nuclear test, and Italian elections set the scene for another whirlwind week in world news
By Jasper Wenban-Smith, international editor of ForesightNews. A round up of world news in the week ahead from journalist resource ForesightNews. Monday 18 February UN investigators looking into atrocities committed in the Syrian conflict will release their latest report on Monday. The commission chair Paulo Pinheiro and member Carla Del Ponte will discuss the report’s […]
BBC Azeri: Reflections on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict
The BBC’s Azerbaijani Service has published a gallery of my photographs taken in the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh in 1994. Over 25,000 people were killed in the war waged in the early 1990s and a million forced to flee their homes. Since a ceasefire agreement was signed in 1994 attempts to mediate a […]
ForesightNews world briefing: upcoming events 3 – 9 October
A weekly round up of world events from Monday, 3 October to Sunday, 9 October from ForesightNews By Nicole Hunt Though it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of which Silvio Berlusconi trial is currently in court, Monday sees the resumption of the most infamous of his four cases, in which he faces charges for abuse […]
Kazan: Last chance for an Armenia-Azerbaijan peace?
16.7 kilometers south of Lachin, Armenian-controlled Azerbaijan © Onnik Krikorian for IWPR Expectations of ending the long-running conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh are high ahead of a meeting between the two presidents hosted by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev in Kazan on 25 June. The war fought in the early 1990s […]
Thomas de Waal: Narrative of Peace necessary in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict
Caucasus Conflict Voices is a voluntary grassroots initiative to amplify alternative views on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Today marks the 17th anniversary of the 1994 ceasefire, but both sides are as far away as ever from signing a permanent peace deal. Marking the anniversary, the second […]
Armenia: An online revolution in the making?
Opposition Rally, Liberty Square, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian 2007 Recent events in Tunisia and Egypt have captured the attention of the world’s media and also encouraged and inspired other movements elsewhere, albeit in much bloodier ways as this week has shown in Bahrain and Libya. Not to be outdone, opposition groups in […]
International Crisis Group: Fears of a new Armenia-Azerbaijan war
16.7 kilometers south of Lachin, Armenian-controlled Azerbaijan. Photo © Onnik Krikorian While it didn’t come as much of a surprise, the latest report from the International Crisis Group (ICG) makes depressing reading. Locked in a bitter stalemate since the war over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh during which around 25,000 were killed and […]
Caucasus Conflict Voices
Although actually underway since June 2008, it’s especially been a labour of love for the past year, but now some of the essays solicited for a personal online project are available as a free e-book for reading online or downloading. Accompanied by colour photographs, the book contains opinions on Armenian-Azerbaijani relations and the conflict between the […]
Armenia: The Spear (updated)
Being based in Armenia for 12 years hasn’t only given me plenty to photograph and write about, but also provides me with an opportunity to fix for many large media organizations. Last year, for example, I regularly fixed for the BBC, Al Jazeera English and The Wall Street Journal as well as photographed and organized […]
Global Voices launches Caucasus Conflict Voices
Since working on my own project using new and social media to counter local media bias in terms of reporting on Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and the still unresolved conflict between the two estranged neighbours over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, it’s been quite a roller coaster of a ride. If in late 2008 it seemed […]
Blogs & Bullets: Evaluating the Impact of New Media on Conflict
When first starting to examine the use of new and social media in facilitating communication between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the environment of an effective information blockade, I could never have imagined that what started out simply as a personal and professional need would have reached the point it has now. In fact, it has […]
Mobile phones: Reporting in your pocket
Last year arguably saw unprecedented attention on the use of mobile phones for content creation in some shape or form. Whether SMS updating crisis mapping platforms such as Ushahidi, using Twitter to update followers on breaking news, or simply to use as video cameras, in a sense there was plenty to demonstrate their […]
Social media for social change comes to the Caucasus
Tbilisi, Georgia, and a conference on using social media for social change. Nothing new in that for many people reading this blog, perhaps, but low Internet penetration thanks to high costs and slow connections makes the situation somewhat different in the South Caucasus. A 4 mb/s connection in Georgia, for example, costs around […]
BBC Azeri: Social media and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict transformation
When Arzu Geybullayeva and I first started to use blogs and social networking sites to connect a growing number of liberal, tolerant and progressive Armenians and Azerbaijanis despite the still unresolved conflict between the two countries over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, I don’t think we ever could have imagined where it […]
No Borders Here – communication between Armenia and Azerbaijan
With the conflict in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh still unresolved, journalists and civil society activists in Armenia have few opportunities to meet with their Azeri counterparts, and vice versa. But increasingly, blogs and social networks offer new possibilities for dialogue across a cease-fire line in place since 1994. Other online tools offer immediate audio […]
New Media training for Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists in Tbilisi, Georgia
Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, seems to be attracting me a lot these days and not least because it’s the only place in the South Caucasus where Armenians and Azerbaijanis can meet. With a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan as elusive as ever, and with some still expecting a new war within the next five […]
Documentary: From Home to Home
An ethnic Azeri originally from Armenia reads aloud the Armenian inscriptions of the tombstones in his village in Azerbaijan. An ethnic Armenian from Azerbaijan videos the Azeri graveyard in his village in Armenia, speaking over the tape in Azerbaijani before sending it off to the families of those that used to live there instead of […]
Peaceful coexistence in the South Caucasus
With few expecting a breakthrough in negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan to resolve the long-standing conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, if the likelihood of ethnic Armenians and Azeris ever being able to live together in peace again seemed remote, you’d be wrong. A recent working visit to Georgia, the third of the […]
Reporting cultural diversity in the South Caucasus
Despite all the obstacles frustrating recent developments in the South Caucasus, and specifically a new push to resolve the frozen conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh as well as to normalize ties between Armenia and Turkey, this year has been one of the most liberating yet. For the […]
Mobile reporting from Armenia’s second largest city
Vartik Ghukasyan is 71 and alone. An orphan, she never married and now struggles to live on a pension of 25,000 AMD (about £30) a month in a rundown hostel in Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city still reeling from the devastating 1988 earthquake and the economic collapse following the collapse of the former Soviet […]
Armenia-Turkey protocols signed, small protest at home
There’s obviously no rest for the wicked. No sooner than I finish fixing for the BBC and Al Jazeera English on what most outside observers consider to be a historic agreement between Armenia and Turkey to normalize relations after almost a century of bitter rivalry, than Tbilisi beckoned in the form of a New Media […]
Armenia, Turkey sign historic protocols… eventually
Under the watchful eyes of the United States and Russia, Armenia and Turkey have finally signed two protocols which many hope will see the normalization of relations between the two neighbouring countries. Fixing again for Al Jazeera English and the BBC, today’s historic development meant another visit to Margara, an Armenian village on the border […]
Round the clock protest ahead of possible Armenia-Turkey breakthrough
While most were enjoying a sunny afternoon in the Armenian capital, a few dozen members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) continued their round the clock hunger strike outside the main government building and the adjacent Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The nationalist party is staging the action to protest what many consider to be […]
Putting mobile reporting to the test (again…)
Frontline Club bloggers seem to be meeting up and working together a lot of late. Guy Degen recently worked with Matthew Collin on a story about the breakaway territory of Abkhazia for Al Jazeera English and the latter is currently in Armenia filming two news reports for the same on the case of Mariam Sukhudyan, […]