28/11/2013 21:06
Members of Armenian and Azerbaijani NGOs to meet in Istanbul
“Women from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Karabakh will take part in the meeting in Istanbul on December 1-5. The purpose is to increase the role of women in the settlement of the Karabakh conflict,” Tatevik Aghabekian, program coordinator of Women’s Resource Center NGO, told the correspondent of Aysor.am.
She refuted the APA news agency’s information that representatives of the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of Nagorno Karabakh will meet in Istanbul. In her words, there was no such goal and APA provided incorrect information.
According to the source, the Azerbaijani side is represented byNovella Jafaroglu, Chairwoman of Association of Women’s Rights Protection after D. Aliyeva.
T. Aghabekian said the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 in 2000, but since then no concrete steps have been taken to promote women’s participation in the resolution of conflicts.
“The program has the following aim: the meeting participants should increase the role of women in resolution of the conflicts in their countries. It is a regular meeting, such meetings have been rganized previously,” T. Aghabekian noted.
As for the Istanbul meeting’s format, she said the participants will represent Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno Karabakh. According her, such meetings have been held on the initiative of NGOs in the past five years.
It should be mentioned that Wikileaks released materials about activities of Azerbaijani human rights activist Novella Jafaroglu, in particular, the details of Anakara- and Baku-financed ‘conciliatory’ conferences organized by her in Baku and Tbilisi. Initially, Jafaroglu was organizing meetings with the participation of women of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
According to Wikileaks, women representing Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh attended some of the meetings.
It is noteworthy that Jafaroglu said that prior to one of her meetings, she told Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov about her idea so that he would facilitate the entry of women representing Armenia and Karabakh into Azerbaijan with the aim of attending a conference in Baku. The deputy minister promised to discuss the idea with ‘responsible persons’.