The war of nagorno-karabakh: the role of international community in solving the conflict

The thesis analyzes the involvement of international community in the conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh and tries to evaluate if the involvement is sufficient to solve it. The main purpose of this study is to find out the main strengths and weaknesses of the involvement of various international organizations and separate countries. The study relies on a premise that the international community’s efficient contribution in the peace talks can significantly encourage the conflicting parties to sign an agreement to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The first goal of this study is to construct a theoretical framework based on previous academic researches on the topic of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution. The theoretical framework helps to evaluate the international community‘s involvement in conflict resolution and to identify some possible ways to improve it in the future. The second goal is to analyze the main events leading to the conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh, in the years of active war and after the parties signed the ceasefire agreement. The analysis is done while using the method of case study. The third goal is to evaluate the involvement of international organizations and separate countries in solving the conflict. As mentioned, this is the main aim of the thesis, which is achieved by using the theoretical framework and the analysis of the main events in the conflict. Finally, the fourth goal is to draw conclusions about the international community’s involvement and to determine whether the involvement is sufficient or not to end the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The analysis in this bachelor thesis is based on the theories of mediation and reconciliation. Based on the analysis several conclusions could be made. First of all, Armenia and Azerbaijan does not find a common ground on the question of the dependence of Nagorno-Karabakh region. According to the theoretical framework, a truth on which both parties can agree is the main ingredient of building the reconciliation between the two nations. Usually, the process of reconciliation starts immediately after the signing of peace treaty, but in the case of frozen conflict the process of the official peace between the countries is protracted, which causes the decrease of the possibility to reach a peace between ethnic groups. The search of the common truth should be started immediately and the international community can play a big role in this by starting a constructive dialogue between the conflicting parties. The international community expressed a total trust for the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created specifically to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. However, the trust was overrated, because the Minsk Group has never fully met while the co-chairs (Russia, France and USA) work inconsistently. The dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan is fruitless, which lets to presume that the Minsk Group is oriented to the steadiness of the dialogue, but not to the results. The analysis shows that the Minsk Group as it is now is not suitable for the mediation in the conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh. Taking that in consideration, it should start internal reorganization or even step down from the mediation in the conflict. The most suitable substitutes for the Minsk Group could be the USA or the UN Security Council. Both of them seem to be the least biased options which have a lot of experience in solving conflicts by peaceful meanings. To sum up, the international community’s involvement in solving the conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh is not only insufficient, but also faulty. The resolution of the conflict is totally in the hands of the Minsk Group, but it is unable to solve the conflict for almost three decades. The current situation requires changes in the mediation process, however, it can provoke negative consequences. The evaluation of the possible changes exceeds the field of this study, so it should be done in the further researches