On October 7, representatives of the Caucasus School of Governance Eka Akobia and Tsitsi Chubinidze took part in online workshop on “Feminist Foreign Policy in South Caucasus”. The meeting was attended by experts working on peace and security issues from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Germany and Turkey, as well as the Green Party MPs of the German Bundestag.

The main goal of the workshop was to analyze challenges and opportunities facing the implementation of feminist foreign policy in practice at regional or international levels. Group of experts have also discussed the specifics of feminist foreign policy in South Caucasus, particularly with a view on the Georgian-Abkhaz(-Russian), Armenian-Turkish, Armenian-Azerbaijani and Karabakh conflict and shared their perspectives and policy recommendations to the audience.

Dean of the Caucasus School of Governance and the Director of the Institute of Peace Studies Eka Akobia delivered a speech on the women’s involvement in Georgia’s foreign policy. She provided an overview of the situation regarding the women’s participation at different levels of foreign policy formation and peace negotiations. She has also emphasized the need for confidence building and dialogue between conflict effected societies, the necessity of developing a common approach to the conflict resolution and the importance of women’s involvement in this process, first of all in terms of promoting peace through the dialogue.

At the end of the workshop, experts underlined that it’s important to provide the comprehensive analysis of current regional and global political and security environment and encourage cooperation between experts to ensure the integration of feminist foreign polity into the states’ foreign policy.