INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
On 23 – 24 March 2013, “Caucasus Peace Conference: two Decades of Women’s Rights in the Caucasus” was held in Yerevan, Armenia. It was organized by the “Democracy Today” NGO. It was the first regional conference aimed to develop a new platform of collaboration between women’s groups from the entire Caucasus. By establishing new cooperative platforms, women aim not only to get to know each other’s work, methodologies, and achievements in promoting peace and human rights but also to learn from each other, support one another, and get empowerment as an end.
Starting from 2016, the Conference has become international. Organizations working in different parts of the world are invited.
In 2021, the Annual International Conference entitled “Displacement of women: gender implications and search for viable solutions to protect human rights” organized by “Democracy Today” took place in Yerevan, Armenia on December 16 and 17 of 2021.
As with its previous conferences, this one also aimed to strengthen the implementation of UNSC Resolution 1325.
The main goal of the conference was to launch an open discussion process of the grave human rights violations encountered by over 21 million women and children from different parts of the world caused by numerous diverse root causes including but not limited to the impact of war, internal strife, environmental crisis, conflict, and armed violence, military aggression use of explosive weapons shrinking democratic space and political pressure with the governments, international organizations, women’s and human rights groups and develop and strengthen international legal mechanism protecting such groups.
Irrespective of the fact that the burden of displacement is shared by men and women almost equally, the actual effects and the negative repercussions of living in internal displacement seem to affect women more than men, particularly in regards to livelihoods, security, health, and education. Twenty-five years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, one of the most comprehensive global policy frameworks for gender equality, women and girls are still suffering disproportionately from displacement.
The conference took place in a hybrid format, with presentations in the offline format in Yerevan and the participation of women from Artsakh who are displaced because of the 44-day war. Women from Goris ( Syunik region) and Martuni (Gegharkunik region) of Armenia who founded themselves in a new geopolitical reality and increased insecurity due to the trilateral ceasefire agreement which was signed on November 9, 2020. Women from 16 countries such as Germany, Russian Federation, USA, Kenya, Columbia, Lebanon, Turkey, Georgia, Palestine, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Italy, and Armenia spoke online. The participants brought up the situation on displacement that currently exists in different parts of the world.
