BREN Hague Fellowship Week

Eight peacebuilders from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova came together for a week-long fellowship in The Hague organised by IWPR and the Global Network for Women Peacebuilders (GNWP).

“Being here is very important, because what we learned, we are going to share with our community and change some lives,” said Shushanna Hasasyan, project and training coordinator with Pink Armenia, one of the NGOs supported by IWPR’s Building Resilience in the Eastern Neighbourhood (BREN) programme.

BREN, funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and implemented by IWPR, supports women, minorities, and vulnerable groups to counteract conflict, instability, and insecurity in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova.

“The BREN fellowship brings fellows to The Hague, the international city of peace and justice, to meet with civil society organisations and other ministries here working on peace,” said Sophia Faron, programme coordinator for Eastern Europe, South Caucasus & Central Asia at GNWP.

The week’s discussions centred on exchange, learning and fostering a deeper understanding of the peacebuilding priorities for collaborative efforts.

“For me it is very powerful to meet fellows from four countries. We have our differences but also a lot of similarities. We sometimes feel pain as activists, but we can also feel recognition.”  Maryam Majodva, a BREN fellow from Gender Hub, Azerbaijan.

Katrina Leclerc, programme director at GNWP, noted that participants expressed “appreciation for feeling heard, feeling as they are being valued, and that their experiences as Eastern European nations are being recognised”.

A key activity during the week was the Fireside Peace Chat at The Hague Humanity Hub, featuring the personal stories of peacebuilders and attracting an audience with interest and experience in the region.

Vladimer Mkervalishvili, executive director of Rights Georgia and a panellist at the event, said that it had been exciting to learn that there were individuals and institutions from around the world who were committed to Georgia’s membership to the EU.

“This is a new motivation for me to become more active in society and to encourage different groups to promote democracy in Georgia.”