12:12,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian parliament ratified with 61 to 26 votes on Tuesday the agreement on involving a €50 million loan in budgetary support from the OPEC Fund.
The OPEC Fund for International Development (the OPEC Fund) is supporting green, inclusive and sustainable development in Armenia with a €50 million loan through its program lending instrument.
12:58,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. A ruling party lawmaker has drafted legislation seeking to introduce several options for draft evaders to be exonerated and cleared of criminal charges in case of turning themselves in.
Men who’ve evaded mandatory military service and are above the age limit (27) are prosecuted and face a 5-year prison sentence under the current regulations.
Under current law, draft evaders who are now above the age of 27 can’t serve in the military even if they wanted to and they certainly face criminal prosecution.
MP Hayk Sargsyan from the ruling Civil Contract party has drafted a bill that would give draft dodgers the option to have their criminal charges dropped by either enlisting into the armed forces and serving a full 2-year term, or serving a 1-year term and paying 2,5 million drams, or serving for 6 months and paying 5 million drams, or serving 1 month and paying 10 million drams, or not serving at all and paying 15 million drams to the government.
According to Sargsyan, today there are over 10,000 fugitives on charges of draft evasion. Over 5,000 of them are above the age of 27.
Most of them are abroad and do not return to Armenia in order to avoid imprisonment. Sargsyan argues that if his bill isn’t adopted the draft evaders who are now abroad would wait until they are above the age of 37 to return to be cleared of the charges on the basis of statute of limitations.
Sargsyan said on Tuesday at a parliamentary debate that the legislation seeks to give those who haven’t served and are now wanted the opportunity to be useful to their country.
“I wouldn’t want us to ever declare amnesty for these people again,” he said, referring to a 2021 amnesty declared by the Armenian parliament which cleared of criminal charges over 1300 draft evaders. “But I also wouldn’t want to sentence five thousand citizens to five years in prison, because by doing so, not only wouldn’t our country benefit, but we’d spend a lot of money on finding, sentencing and detaining them,” Sargsyan said.
“That’s what this legislation is about, to give these people the chance to be useful to their country, instead of becoming a burden.”
Multiple men would repatriate to Armenia if the bill passes parliament, according to the MP.
13:39,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister’s Office Arayik Harutyunyan has held a meeting with Ambassador of Iran to Armenia Mehdi Sobhani.
Chief of Staff Harutyunyan and Ambassador Sobhani discussed “issues pertaining to the continual development and strengthening of the Armenia-Iran relations,” Harutyunyan’s office said in a readout.
A number of agenda items of the Armenian-Iranian relations were addressed.
Issues related to the implementation of joint projects in the economy, trade-economic ties, infrastructure development, healthcare, education, science, culture and other directions were discussed. Both sides emphasized the importance of fully utilizing the existing potential in bilateral relations.
14:03,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Defense of Armenia Suren Papikyan has met with his Cypriot counterpart Michalis Giorgallas during an official visit to the island country on December 12.
The one-on-one meeting was followed by enlarged-format talks.
“During the meeting, a number of issues related to Armenian-Cypriot cooperation in the defense field were discussed,” the Ministry of Defense said in a readout. “The parties conducted a comprehensive review of the ongoing cooperation and delineated the new opportunities for its advancement, expressing a shared commitment to cooperation across a broader spectrum: encompassing training programs, the exchange of expertise in various domains, military-technical cooperation, and other matters of mutual interest.
Suren Papikyan thoroughly presented the Crossroads of Peace project developed by the Government of the Republic of Armenia to his colleague.
Concluding the meeting, the Defense Ministers of both nations issued a joint statement for the media, reaffirming their dedication to cooperation with a comprehensive agenda,” the defense ministry added.
14:43,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. On December 11-12, in Geneva, Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia Vahan Kostanyan participated in the Human Rights 75 High-Level Event dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UN member states presented their pledges and commitments in human rights and a number of related areas, the foreign ministry said in a press release.
In his remarks Deputy Foreign Minister underscored Armenia`s unwavering commitment to genocide prevention and reiterated the readiness to spare no effort towards strengthening international mechanisms and responses aimed at preventing gross violations of human rights.
The head of the Armenian delegation also noted about steps to be taken towards fulfillment of human rights obligations and the introduction of a national accountability mechanism.
Armenia reaffirmed its commitment to support the addressing of needs and the protection of fundamental rights of forcibly displaced people as a consequence of the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The efforts to overcome extreme poverty and the adoption of the law on equal rights were highlighted as future-oriented commitments.
The World Bank announced today that Armenia has been selected to receive a new grant from the State and Peacebuilding Umbrella Trust Fund to support the mental health and wellbeing of displaced children and adolescents from Nagorno-Karabakh region in over 200 schools across the country. The grant will finance an upcoming project to be implemented jointly by the World Bank and the Teach for Armenia Foundation, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport, the Republican Pedagogical-Psychological Center, and the Armenian State Pedagogical University.
The $2.9 million grant will support the social integration of displaced children and adolescents into Armenian schools, and capacity building and mentoring of school staff to deliver tailored mental health and psychosocial support to displaced children and adolescents, their families, and students from the hosting communities.
It will provide technical assistance to design a comprehensive approach for the integration of displaced children and adolescents into the education system along with a specialized mental health and psychosocial support program through a combination of change-based learning, engagement with local communities, and robust monitoring and evaluation systems in schools. The grant will also support integrating the provision of mental health and psychosocial support into the new curriculum.
The State and Peacebuilding Umbrella Trust Fund (SPF) is a global multi-donor fund administered by the World Bank that works with partners to address the drivers and impacts of fragility, conflict, and violence and strengthen the resilience of countries and affected populations, communities, and institutions. SPF is supported by Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland.
The World Bank is currently financing 10 projects in Armenia totaling $500 million. Since its inception in Armenia in 1992, the World Bank has provided around $2.7 billion from International Development Association (IDA) to which Armenia became a donor in 2023, from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and from trust funds. The World Bank is committed to continuing its support to Armenia in its development path for ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity on a livable planet.
https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/business/2742160-forex-dollar-rises-ahead-of-us-inflation-data-fed-meeting-yuan-heavy
By Robert M. Cutler
In a first-of-a-kind bilateral statement, without any external participation, Azerbaijan and Armenia have arrived at an extremely important humanitarian and diplomatically symbolic agreement. It is the first time Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed to coordinate on any international matter.
The humanitarian aspect is that the Republic of Azerbaijan—”driven,” according to the statement, “by the values of humanism and as a gesture of goodwill”—agreed to the release of 32 Armenian military servicemen, while the Republic of Armenia, equally “driven by the values of humanism and as a gesture of goodwill,” is releasing two Azerbaijani military servicemen. But that’s not all.
The Twenty-eighth Session of the Conference of Parties (COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is now concluding in Abu Dhabi. The Twenty-ninth Session (COP29) will be held next year somewhere in Eastern Europe. In what might be called the most constructive and progressive act that “climate diplomacy” has ever accomplished, Armenia has withdrawn its own candidacy to host COP29 in support of Azerbaijan’s bid.
“The Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan,” the joint statement says, “do hope that the other countries within the Eastern European Group will also support Azerbaijan’s bid to host.” In return, Azerbaijan is supporting the Armenian candidature for membership in the Eastern European Group COP Bureau. This choice has now garnered Russia’s backing.
The choice of venue for COP29 requires unanimous consent of all the Parties. Russia had vetoed the bid of Bulgaria, the candidate from the European Union, but now Bulgaria has also withdrawn its candidature. The COP29 would have been held by default in Germany, if no universal agreement had been possible.
The bilateral statement reconfirms the two countries’ intentions “to normalize relations and to reach a peace treaty on the basis of respect for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.” It concludes that they “will continue their discussions regarding the implementation of more confidence-building measures,” to take effect in the near future, that “will positively impact the entire South Caucasus region.” This agreement was worked out through direct contacts between the Presidential Administration of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia.
All third-party mediation, with the possible exception of the American initiative, had collapsed by mid-2023. In fact, this new first-ever agreement illustrates how direct bilateral talks, on which Azerbaijan had insisted for some time, can be more efficacious than mediated negotiations. The latter provide the mediator with the opportunity to insert their own interests into the bilateral relationship, thus actually complicating the negotiations.
After the November 2020 Trilateral Statement on the cessation of hostilities, agreed in Moscow through direct high-level mediation, Russia dominated the peace process (such as it was) for about a year. Of course, Russia’s main motive at the time was to delay or make impossible a full and authoritative resolution of the conflict, in order to conserve its dominant position in the South Caucasus.
This monopoly began to be broken in December 2021, when President of the European Council Charles Michel hosted the first of several meetings between the two leader, under the auspices of his good offices in Brussels. Tangible progress in that format continued through subsequent meetings in February, April, May, and August 2022.
French President Emmanuel Macron shoehorned his way into that process in October 2022 at the first summit of the European Political Community (EPC), in Prague. This led to the breakdown of the process, as German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz was subsequently added in. The early-October fiasco of the Grenada meeting put paid to Michel’s autonomous initiative.
Not only was a request that Turkey—a key regional actor—should participate alongside France and Germany explicitly refused. Moreover, the attempt was made to ambush Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev with a previously prepared statement, and to compel his agreement with it. Sensing the trap, Aliyev simply declined to attend, on the basis that repeated declarations by Macron and actions by the French parliament incontrovertibly demonstrated France’s incapacity to be an impartial arbiter.
American diplomacy entered the scene in early 2023. After over two years of confusion following the 2020 war, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken initiated a meeting held, in February between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, also attended by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried as well as by newly-appointed Senior Advisor for Caucasus Negotiations (finally no longer representative to the defunct OSCE Minsk Group) Louis Bono.
An intensive meeting in Washington in May, mediated by Blinken between the two countries’ foreign ministers represented that rare diplomatic phenomenon, a genuine breakthrough. Armenian-American interest groups continually militated against peace through their strong influence in the Congress. Over the summer, they reasserted this influence, obtaining the appointment of James O’Brien to the post of Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs.
O’Brien gave disastrously misinformed testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on November 15, during which he announced suspension of all military and other assistance to Azerbaijan and, among other things, confused the Russian troops based inside Armenia at Gyumri with the Russian troops deployed in the formerly Armenian-occupied area of Azerbaijan. He also repeated the Armenian lobby’s baseless contention that Azerbaijan was preparing a military attack against the territory of Armenia.
An informal ban on high-level Azerbaijani visits to Washington was soon announced, but this was rescinded after President Aliyev reciprocated by cutting off all U.S. official visits to Baku. He rescinded this move after Blinken telephoned him personally to ask to allow O’Brien to visit Baku in early December, in return for which Aliyev received the rescission of the informal American ban on Azerbaijani visits to Washington.
When O’Brien met with Aliyev in Baku on December 6, he was exceptionally accompanied by the U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan. According to the State Department communiqué, they “discussed our countries’ deep historical ties and the importance of the bilateral relationship,” and O’Brien told Aliyev that “Secretary Blinken looks forward to hosting Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan in Washington soon for the next round of peace negotiations.”
In return, and in a final desperate attempt to block peace, the principal Armenian interest group in Washington has begun a campaign against giving Bayramov a visa to enter the United States. It seems, nevertheless, that U.S.–Azerbaijani relations are now more or less back on track; however, given the bilateral and various regionally-focused forums now available, what the U.S. can specifically contribute to peace in the South Caucasus remains to be seen.
Armenia - Dec 11 2023
Yerevan /Mediamax/. Lead Spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy Peter Stano said that “the EU is not considering holding joint military exercises with Armenia.”
“The EU is not considering the possibility of holding joint military exercises with Armenia. The EU is not a military alliance, but a political and economic community of values,” Stano told Russia’s Izvestia.
“The European Union is exploring the possibility of providing assistance to the Armenian army through the Europe Peace Foundation in a “non-lethal format”, but there are no specific decisions yet,” the EU representative said.
Human rights activists have raised alarm over the detention of a mobilized Russian soldier on charges of desertion in Armenia, saying the move amounts to a violation of the ex-Soviet republic’s sovereignty.
Russian military police in Armenia detained Dmitry Setrakov, who fled the country to avoid serving in the Russian military, the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor said Sunday.
Setrakov, 39, is currently being held at a Russian military base in the northern Armenian city of Gyumri after being apprehended on Dec. 6-7, the organization said.
He faces five to 10 years in prison if convicted of leaving his military unit during Russia’s mobilization period.
Setrakov fled Russia on Nov. 30 with the help of Idite Lesom (“Get Lost”), a project that helps Russians avoid military service in Ukraine, after he refused to fight.
“He was mobilized and didn’t want to fight so we helped him leave the country,” Idite Lesom head Grigory Sverdlin told The Moscow Times by phone, adding that Setrakov had spent several months in hiding from the military before turning to the project.
"The kidnapping of a person on foreign territory is an extraordinary occurrence," Sverdlin said.
The people who detained Setrakov had identified themselves to him as members of Armenia’s military police “but were obviously Russian soldiers and security services,” Sverdlin said.
According to Idite Lesom, Setrakov called his wife and told her that he was detained in Gyumri and was being held at the Russian military base No. 120.
The Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor said it “condemns the abduction of and the illegal activities against a person under the Republic of Armenia’s legal protection by Russian military police in the Republic of Armenia’s territory.”
It argued that Russian authorities violated Armenia’s sovereign power to restrict a person’s liberty on its territory.
“This case is very alarming for the human rights community, because, essentially, this is a kidnapping of a person on the territory of another country,” said lawyer Anastasia Burakova, the head of Kovcheg, an international group supporting Russian emigres and anti-war activists.
“We are closely monitoring the situation in Armenia and we are in direct contact with local human rights activists,” Burakova told The Moscow Times. “This incident is lawlessness. Neither the Russian military nor Russian law enforcement agencies have the jurisdiction to carry out search operations or detentions on the territory of other countries.”
Burakova said there is little possibility that activists could successfully lobby for his release.
“But unfortunately, the prospects aren't very promising, given the fact that he is at the Russian military base and the possibilities of legal assistance are very limited,” she added.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/12/11/russian-military-detains-deserter-in-armenia-ngo-a83375
The Milken Institute School of Public Health will partner with an Armenian university to research the prevention of chronic diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease for the next five years, officials announced last month.
Milken and the American University of Armenia Turpanjian College of Health Sciences, or AUA, in Yerevan, Armenia, will annually enroll five to six Armenian students to take courses on chronic diseases from Milken and AUA faculty and conduct research between September 2023 and 2027 on AUA’s campus. Carla Berg, a principal investigator of the project, said the institutions aim to develop a formal prevention program for noncommunicable diseases, or NCDs — diseases like heart disease and diabetes that do not spread through infection — allowing both institutions to share research findings to help inform health policy related to NCD prevention.
Unhealthy eating habits, smoking tobacco, infrequent exercise and high alcohol consumption are the behavioral origins of susceptibility to NCDs. Generational poverty can also increase the risk of developing NCDs because of insufficient access to health care, indicating the growing need for global research into their prevention, according to a 2023 study published in the National Library of Medicine.
“We hope to enhance research capacity related to NCD prevention and control, emphasizing social determinants of NCD risk factors,” Berg, a professor of prevention and community health at GW, said in an email.
Berg said selected Armenian citizens studying medicine receive covered tuition from the U.S National Institute of Health Fogarty International Center and additional funds to conduct research. Principal investigators Berg and Nino Paichadze, Milken professors, and AUA professor Varduhi Petrosyan are leading the project.
Berg said researchers want to share practices that mitigate the development of NCDs, like improving social conditions and reducing tobacco and alcohol consumption, to advance their research. She said the program looks to widen the scope of research into NCD prevention with the students launching research careers focused on NCDs at the end of the program’s five years.
AUA held the introductory meeting for the program from Oct. 9 to 11 where program leaders convened to share their research findings related to NCDs, like the high risk of NCD development linked with global tobacco use, with participating students who will research similar topics.
“One of my mottos is, ‘To whom much is given, much will be required,’” Berg said. “I feel like it is incumbent on countries with resources and expertise to share and elevate our neighbors around the globe.”
Experts in global health and NCDs said cooperation and education across national borders is crucial to advancing research into NCDs, which affect people globally.
Olatunji Alese, an associate professor of hematology and medical oncology at Emory University, said international partnerships can be beneficial in reducing the time required to make necessary medical breakthroughs to help patients.
“Being able to collaborate with investigators, clinicians all over the world is advantageous because that way there can be a rapid translation of advances toward patient benefit,” Alese said. “Literally reducing the time it takes for such discoveries, usually in the lab, to be translated into actually helping patients at the bedside.”
Alese said mentored research ensures that medical students are equipped to respond to current circumstances in global health, like the increasing of chronic degenerative diseases like cancer and progress toward treatment of infectious disease in developed countries.
“One of the biggest ways to improve outcomes is training the next generation of health care providers,” Alese said. “That’s no no-brainer. Making sure there is adequate education and training for the next generation of oncologists not just in the U.S., but globally, is extremely important.”
Cher Dallal, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Maryland, said the rising toll of global deaths caused by NCDs indicates the growing need to study their prevention.
“Educating medical students on noncommunicable diseases, and particularly the risk factors for these diseases, such as obesity and physical inactivity, is crucial for prevention and ultimately, reducing mortality rates and improving the overall health of adults worldwide,” Dallal said in an email.
Dallal said there are specific benefits to studying these diseases from a global perspective, like progressing research regarding cancer control and prevention. She said global inequalities in socioeconomic factors like health care access influence the likelihood of developing a NCD.
“Incidence and mortality rates for cancer differ globally with documented geographical heterogeneity,” Dallal said. “These differences are, in part, due to the distribution and prevalence of risk factors, screening modalities, access to care, social determinants of health and other potential factors.”
Caryn Peterson, an assistant research professor studying epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said studying NCDs from a socioeconomic perspective can help researchers understand the global health disparities that countries experience and can inform policies of targeted prevention. She said structural factors like access to quality health care and an individual’s exposure to risks like air pollution can increase susceptibility to NCDs.
“All of these things play a huge role and to ignore them is to create an incomplete picture of the cause of disease and in particular, the cause of health disparities,” Peterson said.