Marking Five Years of the Istanbul Process in Memory of George Khutsishvili

Marking five years of the Istanbul Process

in memory of

George Khutsishvili

As the fifth anniversary of the Istanbul Process is coming up, GPPAC and ICCN have released a publication to commemorate the work of Dr. George Khutsishvili, the director of the International Center on Conflict and Negotiation (ICCN) who passed away in October 2013.

GPPAC and ICCN

In August 2008, in the immediate post-war context, when all diplomatic relations between Russia and Georgia were broken, there was a need to identify a format that would enable the Russian and Georgian sides to explore each other's perspectives. The International Center on Conflict and Negotiation (ICCN), which functions as the GPPAC Regional Secretariat for the Caucasus network, suggested the track 2 diplomacy approach as a framework for the restoration of communication. However, as apprehension and mistrust ran deep in both societies, and objective information on the situation was lacking, a range of questions related to which side initiates and owns the process, or how the neutrality of the process is ensured and sustained, made the initiative extremely sensitive.

As a global network of civil society organizations working across conflicts on an international level, the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) was perceived as being able to play an impartial role in facilitating the process, and offered a framework that provided the needed politically neutral environment for the Russian and Georgian sides to engage with each other in a dialogue process. Thus, on the request of ICCN, GPPAC supported initiation and further facilitation of what later became the most long-standing of dialogue efforts between Russian and Georgian high-profile experts.

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http://www.istanbulprocess.org/

The Publication of the GPPAC and ICCN, 2013

კონფლიქტებისა და მოლაპარაკების საერთაშორისო კვლევითი ცენტრი

International Center on Conflict and Negotiation

Международный Центр по Конфликтам и Переговорам

1994

"Peace is Handmade"