Author: Tambiyan Samvel

DENVER | Much of the federal relief aid sent to Colorado’s child care providers during the pandemic helped keep doors open and businesses solvent.

But one small stream of federal COVID funding — $23 million — was used for innovation in the sector rather than its survival. That money was distributed through the CIRCLE Grant program and helped fund more than 200 projects around the state. The projects included weekly bilingual preschool classes for Armenian-American children, a training program for Head Start parents working as classroom aides, and a loan program to help child care employees cover emergency expenses.

While the grant funding represents a fraction of the $678 million in federal COVID relief sent to Colorado’s early childhood sector, program leaders are proud of the grassroots efforts it sparked.

“Once again, we are seeing that folks that are closest to the problems have the best solutions,” said Jennifer Stedron, executive director of Early Milestones Colorado, which distributed the CIRCLE grants.

The yearlong grants ranged from $10,000 to $300,000. Many of them focused on making child care more accessible to families. In some cases, that meant creating new infant and toddler classrooms or sending mobile preschools to underserved neighborhoods. In others, the goal was to better meet specific needs, say, by adding programs for bilingual students or children with disabilities.

The nonprofit Armenians of Colorado Inc. used its $35,000 CIRCLE grant to pilot a free Saturday preschool class that incorporated both English and Armenian. A dozen children attended the program last spring at the First Baptist Church of Denver, some who didn’t know a word of Armenian and some who spoke only Armenian. They listened to poems and stories in Armenian and also did activities in English, including one on the Easter bunny.

The idea was to “show the kids you can use both languages to have academic and social interactions,” said Simon Maghakyan, an activist in the Armenian community and a CIRCLE Grant consultant for Armenians of Colorado. “It’s important they see value in both.”

Some of the children, who ranged in age from 2 to 5, had never attended any kind of preschool, he said. For most, it was “their first introduction to either language in the written form.” The two languages have different alphabets.

The Armenian community has deep roots in Colorado, with some of the earliest immigrants arriving in the late 1800s. Statewide, there are about 5,000 people of Armenian descent. The Armenian Genocide during the World War I era, as well as more recent displacements, have gradually brought more Armenians to the United States and Colorado.

But it’s still a relatively small group, and because of assimilation pressures and the dominance of English globally, it can be a struggle to maintain the Armenian language, Maghakyan said. That’s why the Saturday preschool program is important. The CIRCLE grant supplied only enough money to plan and run a three-month pilot, but leaders with the organization hope to find a way to keep it going in the future.

Besides funding new programming for children, many CIRCLE grant projects focused on supporting the chronically underpaid early childhood workforce with increased wages, training, or other benefits.

The Denver nonprofit WorkLife Partnership used its CIRCLE grant to offer a program that’s usually available to employers for a fee to child care providers free of charge. The program helps employees quickly access small loans at a lower interest rate than payday lenders would charge.

The process is simple: Employees struggling with a large or unexpected expense, such as a security deposit, utility bill, or car repair, can request a $1,000 loan through WorkLife with no credit check or collateral requirement. The money lands in their bank account in as little as 24 hours. They then pay back the loan through monthly payroll deductions over the course of a year. With interest and a $20 administrative fee, the total repayment on a $1,000 loan is $1,116.

Logan Jones, financial services manager for WorkLife, said, “it’s really designed to be an anti-payday loan.” It helps employees, especially those with bad credit, avoid exorbitant interest rates when they’re in crisis.

He said about 15 employees at two participating Denver area child care centers have taken advantage of the loans, most often for housing costs. Borrowers don’t have to say why they’re seeking the loan, but many do later in voluntary surveys, he said.

Jones said that although the loan benefit was offered free to child care providers through the CIRCLE grant, many didn’t take advantage of it because there were so many CIRCLE grant opportunities and offers at the same time.

“It needs to be staggered out longer,” Jones said.

Stedron, of Early Milestones, agreed that the one-year grant timeline was too short.

“I wish they could have gone on forever, certainly more than one year,” she said.

https://sentinelcolorado.com/metro/an-armenian-preschool-shows-how-the-state-used-covid-funds-to-spark-innovation/

In a dramatic development, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan issued a surprise joint statement on 7 December, outlining a prisoner exchange and mutual confidence-building measures, while committing to continue negotiations on normalizing relations and reaching a long-elusive peace treaty.

The joint statement by the offices of the Armenian Prime Minister and Azerbaijani President opens the path to a full-fledged peace treaty, as European and American diplomats have indicated.

Most notably, “for humanitarian reasons” and as a “gesture of goodwill,” Azerbaijan agreed to release 32 Armenian military personnel, while Armenia will free two Azerbaijanis. This will be the first mass prisoner-of-war exchange in years, especially on terms so favorable to Armenia.

The countries also concurred on reciprocal symbolic gestures. Yerevan will withdraw its bid to host the next UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in favor of Baku, and even calls on other Eastern European states to back Azerbaijan’s application. In return, Baku endorses Armenia’s candidacy for membership in the COP Eastern European States Bureau.

This agreement was a sensation, as just days prior there was no indication of such a breakthrough in relations. On the contrary, there were good reasons to expect a sharp deterioration of relations and intensified fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The “one-day war” of 19 September that allowed Baku to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh had nearly buried peace talks between the countries, according to European Pravda editor Yuriy Panchenko.

For years since the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region with a predominantly ethnic Armenian population but located within Azerbaijan, ended in a precarious ceasefire in 1994, negotiations occurred simultaneously in two formats: Western and Russian.

The Western dialogue was important for Baku since Yerevan, which gained control of Nagorno- Karabakh, had to recognize Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. It was also important for Yerevan as security guarantees for Karabakh Armenians were discussed.

Russia, meanwhile, proposed postponing Karabakh status issues (ideal for Armenia but unacceptable to Azerbaijan) while raising the issue of a transport corridor through Armenia (favorable to Baku but completely unacceptable to Yerevan).

Regaining Karabakh completely changed these dynamics.

Now, the Russian track lost all value for Yerevan – one reason for the current freeze in Armenia-Russia relations. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan lost interest in Western mediation, especially amidst accusations of “ethnic cleansing in Karabakh.” As a result, Baku’s statements became increasingly aggressive, raising the likelihood of a new regional conflict.

So why did Baku pivot from bellicose rhetoric towards conciliation? American pressure seems the impetus. Recent weeks saw multiple forceful warnings from Washington about the unacceptability of coercion toward Armenia. Significantly, US State Department sanctions coordinator Jim O’Brien visited Baku the very day this statement emerged, later tweeting about resumed Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks.

The text itself also spotlights “discussions regarding the implementation of more confidence building measures.” Both sides call for international backing to build “mutual trust” and “positively impact the entire South Caucasus region.”

This likely constitutes the key passage, with adversaries confirming readiness to restart dialogue. The immediate result is drastically reduced regional war risks.

But the omission of Moscow from this significant process, despite decades of Russian mediation attempts, constitutes the developments’ sharpest rebuke for the Kremlin. Perhaps consequently, initial official Russian reactions to the agreed statement proved remarkably restrained and understated, with Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova offering routine approval of progress while insisting upon Russia’s past useless “assistance” contributions regarding negotiations.

“We are ready to continue providing all possible assistance in unblocking transport communications, border delimitation, conclusion of a peace treaty, and contacts along the line of civil society,” she claimed.

However, Russia’s mediation appears no longer necessary – further peace talks will occur under EU and US auspices. A signed peace agreement will end Russia’s South Caucasus influence.

Theoretically, the Kremlin can still sabotage talks, given its military presence in both countries. But without political backing in either Armenia or Azerbaijan this is clearly insufficient to change the course of the countries, Panchenko stresses.

“So, if the West is persistent, signing a peace agreement in the coming months-by the middle of next year-is a very realistic scenario, snd this will be a foreign policy disaster for Russia. Hopefully, not the last,” Panchenko sums up.

Why has an act of blatant ethnic cleansing been widely ignored?

“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
— Adolf Hitler, 22 August 1939

December 9th is the International Day of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Article II of that Convention defines the crime of genocide as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group”. Unfortunately, defining it has not prevented a single genocide since 1948.

The Article in international law that matters for current victims of genocidal projects in Europe (Armenia and Ukraine) is Article 5 of NATO membership — “each member state to consider an armed attack against one member state…to be an armed attack against them all” and not Article II of the Genocide Convention. 

When Hitler evoked the memory of the Turkish “atrocities” against the Armenians in his 1939 speech (the word genocide was not coined until 1944), he was highlighting that massacres in the East in times of war could be committed with impunity and the perpetrators would escape justice. 

Raphael Lemkin helped create the Genocide Convention to remove that impunity and so prevent acts of genocide. Since  some hopeful developments at the turn of the 21st century, this legal project to end genocide has entirely failed. The only thing that prevents genocide is collective security. 

The international human rights industry will use the 9th December to celebrate the elaborate legal processes that have grown up since 1948. There will rightly be much debate about if the Hamas attack on Israel was or was not part of an overall genocidal project: the annihilation of the state of Israel and the Jewish people that live from the River to the Sea. Short answer: it is and should be treated as such, but non-state actors are not covered by the Convention. 

There will be even more focus on if Israel’s response constitutes a programme of genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza. Short answer: it doesn’t but the IDF is inevitably committing crimes against humanity and war crimes in the manner of its operations given the density of population and the way Hamas is embedded in civilian infrastructure, exactly as Hamas intended.

There will be little discussion of the most blatant genocidal acts committed over the last two years: the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the many crimes that occurred consequently, including the forced transferring of up to 20,000 Ukrainian Children to Russia from Ukraine, and the destruction “in whole or in part” of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh by the Azerbaijani state. 

Given the Crime of Aggression perpetrated in the original 2014 invasion, repeated in February 2022, states that are party to the convention have clearly not done what they can to defend Ukraine from Russian genocide as it has unfolded over nine years. Moreover, these acts have been accompanied by actions that meet the 5 Ds framework of incitement to acts of genocide — dehumanisation, demonisation, delegitimisation, disinformation, and the denial of past atrocities perpetrated against the target.

A similar case can be made for Nagorno-Karabakh. It has been a project that has taken place in stages, with military dimensions, cultural dimensions and finally the ethnic cleansing of 120,000 Armenians from their homes in September 2023. It is a war against the Armenian people in revenge for Armenia’s original seizure of contested territory. 

The origin of the conflict is hotly debated. There is little to debate about the actions of Azerbaijan in the war of 2020, the subsequent and previous destruction of Christian sites and the ethnic cleansing of 2023. Together they constitute genocide. The speeches of Aliyev and surrounding propaganda meet the test of the 5 Ds. 

Armenia’s ratification of the Rome Statute demonstrates its intention to make a referral of Azerbaijan to the ICC. 39 states have made that referral on behalf of Ukraine against Putin. The ICC and the Convention on Genocide having done nothing to prevent Aliyev or Putin, the purpose must now be punishment. The chances of punishment are less than zero. The most that might be achieved is that judgment will provide some kind of symbolic justice.

Both the perpetrating states and their dictators must be found guilty of the Crime of Aggression (for stating wars) and the Crimes of Genocide (Article II and the 5 Ds) so that the international legal judgment is unambiguous. Judgment matters to history but also shapes that which is possible in terms of collective and individual redress, supports the enactment of the ICC files already open and provides ballast to international political support for judicial processes. It is not therefore irrelevant. 

The recurrence of Genocide since 1948, with ever greater regularity, shows that the reality is that the Convention on the Prevention on Genocide does not prevent Genocide. The record of prosecution by courts and tribunals shows that it will not punish any sitting Head of State, though it might facilitate them being judged, and it will only ever bring to justice a fraction of the perpetrators who escape state level judicial processes. 

The fact is: the only thing that can prevent Genocide is collective security. The only guarantee of collective security in Europe is full NATO membership. The only thing that can punish Heads of State that perpetrate wars of aggression accompanied by acts of Genocide, is defeat.