As the American University of Armenia celebrates the 20th Anniversary of its first graduation, CivilNet asks AUA co-founder Dr. Armen Der Kiureghian to reflect on the university’s first two decades and what’s ahead with its incoming undergraduate class this fall.
By Paul Vartan Sookiasian Armenia remains the freest country for the press in the South Caucasus and one of the best in the entire former Soviet Union, the Paris-based non-profit Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, has determined. In the latest edition of its yearly World Press Freedom Index, published Friday, Armenia ranks 43rd out of 180 countries surveyed, with a score of 71.6 out of 100. That puts Armenia in what RSF calls as a “satisfactory situation” with regard to media freedom. Armenia’s position has steadily risen over the past few years, though it remained relatively stable this year, with […]
Last week, the United Nations Committee against Torture reviewed Azerbaijan’s compliance with its commitments under international law. Prior to the hearings, the Center for Truth and Justice, a U.S.-based nonprofit, submitted a report based on interviews with nearly three dozen former Armenian prisoners of war in Azerbaijan, detailing widespread use of torture. CivilNet’s Mark Dovich traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, to hear firsthand from the CFTJ team about their findings and about what these proceedings can achieve.
On the Tsitsernakaberd hill in Yerevan, near the Memorial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, renowned Turkish political scientist and activist Cengiz Aktar sat down with CivilNet’s Eric Hacopian to discuss his recent book “The Turkish Malaise,” which has been translated into Armenian. Dr. Aktar also talks about broader regional geopolitics and developments.
By Paul Vartan Sookiasian Earlier this month, Armenia formally launched a long-delayed process to delimit, or legally define, a section of its border with Azerbaijan for the first time, sparking ongoing protests across the country. That process is expected to involve Yerevan handing over to Baku four abandoned villages along the border between Armenia’s northeastern Tavush region and Azerbaijan’s northwestern Gazakh district. The announcement has been met with fierce protests in the nearby communities of Kirants and Voskepar, where scores of residents have been blocking one of the country’s main highways. They are concerned they may be forced out of […]
Sergey Minasyan, Deputy Director of the Caucasus Institute Despite the growing frequency of optimistic statements by officials and experts in both countries, the prospects for progress in Armenian-Turkish normalization remain vague. Armenia has lately been making symbolic steps that it hopes can push Turkey to activate the process. These steps have included the dispatch of humanitarian aid and Armenian rescue workers to the regions of Turkey affected by the February 2023 earthquake, the subsequent visit of the Armenian foreign minister to Ankara and the earthquake-affected areas and his participation in the Anatolian Diplomatic Forum in March 2024, together with Armenia’s […]
