Harriman Institute Conflict Resolution Event

Russian-Georgian Relations from Bilateral and Regional Perspectives

Friday, Sept. 21

10am-12 Noon

Lindsay Rogers Room (707 IAB)

George Khutsishvili – Director, ICCN (Georgia)

Vladimer Papava – Senior Fellow, GFSIS (Georgia)

Archil Gegeshidze – President, Georgian Political Science Association (Georgia)

Andrei Ryabov – Scholar-in-Residence, Carnegie Moscow Center (Russia)

Gregory Shvedov – Editor-in-Chief, Kavkazsky Uzel (Russia)

Ivan Sukhov – Analyst, Moskovskie Novosti (Russia)

Darynell Rodrigues-Torres (Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict)

The panel discussion will reflect on the intermediate results of the dialogue between Georgian and Russian independent experts that took place in Istanbul at what is now called the Istanbul Process.

This program presents and builds on the intermediate results of the Istanbul Process, a program which is part of the activities of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).

The Istanbul Process is prominent among the numerous dialogue processes facilitated by GPPAC. In the aftermath of the August 2008 crisis the International Center on Conflict and Negotiation initiated a Russia-Georgia expert dialogue. The meetings take place in Istanbul and therefore the process was dubbed the Istanbul Process. Since its inception, the Istanbul Process has produced a wide-ranging exchange and analysis of the fundamental causes of the conflict, key trigger factors, and potential mechanisms for stabilizing relations through the creation of a Russian-Georgian dialogue between independent political experts. The book “Russia and Georgia: the Ways out of the Crisis” written jointly by the process participants has been assessed as a success. Currently, the Carnegie Moscow Center, whose experts actively participated in the Istanbul Process meetings from the very start, is acting as the Russian institutional counterpart to ICCN within the Istanbul Process.
GPPAC is a network of civil society organizations active in the field of conflict prevention and peacebuilding across the world. It aims for civil society organizations to work together to voice non-violent solutions to conflicts, considering all stakeholders involved.

The International Center on Conflict and Negotiation (ICCN) based in Tbilisi, Georgia has been a vital part of the GPPAC network since its initiation in 2003, serving as a Regional Secretariat for the GPPAC network in the Caucasus.