Conflict Resolution Beyond the Realist Paradigm: Transformative Strategies and Inclusive Practices in Nagorno-Karabakh and Syria by Philip Gamaghelyan

Author:Philip Gamaghelyan [Gamaghelyan, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9783838211176
Google: 40UwDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 34924113
Publisher: Ibidem Press
Published: 2017-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Part II postscript

You could think by this point of the book that sustaining exclusion and marginalization is not characteristic for conflict resolution work in general and that my colleagues and I are simply bad practitioners. And I sincerely wish you were right. But I am afraid that is not the case. As I will show in the next chapters, if anything, we are typical, and the specific dynamics in our work that I detailed here are reflective of patterns of exclusion and marginalization produced by one conflict resolution initiative after another.

I started this research with an assumption that exclusion and marginalization of the majority would be characteristic for a case like Syria where the conflict sides are not consolidated and the nonrepresentative extremes get disproportionate attention. I further assumed that most other conflicts are indeed binary, and in conflicts with consolidated frames bringing together two sides would be enough to have most everyone concerned well-represented. The refection on the NK Analytic Initiative and other cases discussed below, however, showed that exclusion and marginalization are manifesting themselves not less forcefully within the conflicts that are widely assumed to be binary.

For almost three decades now, virtually every commentator, myself included, have been framing the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as “Armenian-Azerbaijani.” The assumption is that everyone in the region of the conflict falls to one side of that divide or the other. Despite that, a critical look into conflict resolution practices shows that even today great many people affected by the conflict are left out of the process because of such framing. Regularly excluded are Armenians and Azerbaijanis of Nagorno-Karabakh, displaced, migrants, people of mixed heritage, minorities, as well as those who chose not to see ethnicity as their primary identity marker. Even in the successful looking peace initiatives, the binary frames tend to perpetuate exclusion and marginalization.

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