Armenian Women through Peace and War

By Knarik Mkrtchyan, Armenia

Any armed conflict has very devastating impact on all representatives of the certain society or community. Women and girls are in the front lines in this regard. Today many international conventions, resolutions, and international humanitarian laws accept the very fact that the conflict has extremely negative effect on women. Nevertheless, this issue does not receive appropriate attention by different governmental stakeholders and by the community representatives.

Thus, in order to raise women’s issues caused by the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, on 16 September 2014 “Women’s Resource Center Armenia” in cooperation with its branch located in Shushi, Nagorno-Karabakh, organized a conference entitled “Armenian Women through Peace and War”. The main goal of the conference was to emphasize the significant role of women, which they had during and after the conflict.  Besides, the impact of the armed conflict on women was one of the most highlighted topics of the day.

There were guest speakers from Republic of Armenia as well as Nagorno-Karabakh. The main topics of the conference were composed of three main groups:

1.      The impact of the conflict on women and girls and the role of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in this regard,

2.      Women in peace processes, the challenges and opportunities,

3.      UNSCR 1325 and other international and national mechanisms as well as policies on women’s rights.

During the conference the issues concerning socio-economic situation of Armenian women, gender based violence and reproductive health and rights were discussed as well.

The presence of many governmental entities, officials, representatives of SCOs makes the conference much more valuable, since due the positive feedbacks, which organizers received in the end of the day, it can be concluded that now there are lot more opportunities for the two branches of WRC for the cooperation with different stakeholders over women’s empowerment and peace building initiatives.