How NGOs Can Help the State

Baku / 24.04.18 / Turan: The Azerbaijani National Committee of the Helsinki Civil Assembly (ANC HCA) together with the International Center for Conflicts and Negotiations (ICCN Georgia) and GPPAC (Netherlands) held a meeting of experts of civil societies of Azerbaijan and Georgia on "Prevention of conflicts in the South Caucasus through economic interaction " in Baku on April 22.

The meeting was organized with the aim of exploring the potential for economic cooperation of neighboring regional states, taking into account the varying proportion of their affiliation with such political and economic entities as the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union. This was the work of the economist Sabit Baghirov "Potential participation of Azerbaijan in the Eurasian Economic Union in the context of economic factors, advantages and challenges. Can Azerbaijan become a point of conjugation of Eurasian projects? "

The speaker highlighted the main characteristics of Eurasian Economic Union"s (EAEU) basic documents and pointed out that in these documents there are no visible threats or risks for the sovereign rights of the country. Asked by his Georgian counterparts about whether Armenia will give its consent to Azerbaijan's accession to EAEU, Bagirov answered that this issue, if any, will be decided not on the basis of formal law, but the actual will of the leading country of this organization, which is Russia.

Professor of Tbilisi State University Iosif Archvadze in his report highlighted the state and development trends of the Georgian-Azerbaijani economic cooperation over the past ten years. The curves of the diagrams and the data of the tables illustrated the sharp decline in the volumes of this cooperation after 2012. At the same time, Azerbaijan continues to occupy the second place in the list of the most important partners of Georgia, both in trade and in investments.

The economist Natig Jafarli devoted his message to the topic of the negotiations between Azerbaijan and the EU, the state of cooperation between them and the prospects for the development of the western vector of the country's economy. The speaker noted that Azerbaijan, being interested in expanding cooperation with the countries of Europe, unlike most of the participants in the partnership project, does not pursue the goal of actively institutionalizing its cooperation with the EU with any general agreement, but focuses on specific bilateral projects.

The political scientist Zardusht Alizadeh expressed his opinion on the influence of unsettled ethno-territorial conflicts on the prospects for economic relations within the South Caucasus region and on the possibility of integration of the states of the region with major political and economic entities.

The Oriental Study specialist Farda Asadov devoted his speech to the role of values ​​in the process of globalization and regional political and economic integration.

Paata Tsagareishvili, an economist, demonstrated the role and importance of such factors as corruption and prohibitive measures, and the effectiveness of economic projects and investments.

Gubad Ibadoglu spoke on the topic "Experience of cross-border cooperation in settling disputable issues and resolving economic problems between Georgia and Azerbaijan."

Archil Sikharulidze presented his vision of "Georgia's attempts to reduce energy dependence on Russia by using Azerbaijan's energy resources."

The economist Vakhtang Charaya made a report "New ways of Georgia's cooperation with its occupied territories and the possibility of including Azerbaijan in this process."

The coordinator of the GPAAC-ICCN program, Zaal Andzhaparidze, during the discussion of the topic noted that the implementation of this initiative requires a great deal of tact and insight from the performers.

Marina Pochkhua talked about how a complex and delicate problem of adapting temporarily displaced persons to a new reality is being solved in Georgia.

The analyst of Turan News Agency Togrul Juvarly, Professor Ali Abbasov, Arzu Abdullayeva and others took part in discussions on the reports.

The meeting showed the great potential of civil society to analyze the state of economic projects and prepare proposals to improve their effectiveness.

It was decided to hold the next meeting in Tbilisi in early summer. -0-