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| Participants from HCA Ganja, Telavi and Vanadzor during the "Missing Soldiers - project" preparation meeting in Georgia. |
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IKV was founded in 1966, when the Christian churches of the Netherlands resolved to set up a common body to study peace issues, and engage the active solidarity of the church and society . Eleven years later, Mient Jan Faber was made general secretary of the organization. He led IKV through a challenging and successful peace campaign with a strong political position: in 1977, with the support of all churches, IKV launched a nation-wide disarmament campaign to contest the Dutch government’s plan to deploy nuclear missiles. Over the following years, demonstrations in Amsterdam (’81 400 participants) and the Hague (’83 550 participants) set a high-water mark for IKV mobilizations, and led to the circulation of a petition against the missiles which garnered more than one million signatures. By the late eighties, the organization had established close ties with citizen-based initiatives in Eastern Europe and – this according to secret service members of the former East Germany– had a strong influence on the rise of civil society which led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Starting in 1990, IKV leant support to the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly (HCA) groups active in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia and from 1991 on, it has supported the work of HCA in the Caucasus. IKV was in fact one of the founding members of HCA,and remains one of the principal participating groups in Western Europe, but above and beyond its HCA commitments IKV initiated its now-famous program of Euro-Arab Dialogue from below during the early 1990's: Dutch activists were sent to live overseas, internal IKV structures were altered, and an increased focus was placed on project-oriented work. New initiatives were launched in the Caucasus (1995), and elsewhere: Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia' At the same time new strategic partnerships were established, bothabroad and in the Netherlands (ICCO, Hivos, Novib, Psa, Wilde Ganzen). In 2001, IKV began work in Kashmir, becoming the only foreign NGO active there, and also in northern Iraq. The organization now has a fifteen-member
general board (including representatives of 6 Dutch church communities),
and maintains a ten-member executive board and a secretariat of
18 activists in the Hague. IKV Working groups put together an annual
“Peace Week”, analysis of international affairs and the Middle East
which includes studies on conflict and religion.
(piece published in HCA Journal) It is a great honour for me to contribute to this issue of “Civil Initiative”. This newspaper represents an admirable effort on the part of HCA Vandzor, and constitutes an appropriate step towards the development of democracy and human rights in Armenia. I sincerely congratulate the HCA Vanadzor committee on result they have achieved! Since the year 2000 "Civil Initiatives" and other activities of HCA Vanadzor have received the support of the Netherlands’ Interchurch Peace Council (IKV). Not just financial support, but political and moral support as well. It has been IKV’s mission for many years now to be a partner to the HCA committees in the South Caucasus. Today one aspect of our support is the work of Mr. Siegfried Woeber in Vanadzor. He gives advice and support on a daily basis to the Vanadzor HCA committee, and to the committees in Telavi (Georgia) and Ganja (Azerbaijan). We, at IKV, feel greatly inspired by the fight for democracy, human rights and peace that is led by HCA Vanadzor. It is encouraging and moving to see citizens take their cause in their own hands and be ready to fight for values that will establish a cornerstone of today’s and tomorrow’s Armenia. IKV decided to support HCA Vanadzor because it was obvious that this group was and is dedicated to values that we consider also to be our values, and is fighting against human rights violations, abuse of power, corruption and extreme nationalism, -problems we ourselves also combat. IKV supports and cooperates with partners in countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Macedonia, Kashmir, North-Iraq, Palestine, Bosnia and many other countries where people are dedicating themselves to a common cause. Together we establish a world wide movement for democracy, human rights and peace. One of the most challenging and inspiring initiatives of HCA Vanadzor is its project on missing soldiers, which is carried out in partnership with the HCA committee in Ganja. It is shameful that so many parents and other relatives have never been told the fate of their dear ones, who most likely gave their lives for their country. It must be unbearable to live with the memory of someone you care for, not knowing for sure if your son or brother is dead and not knowing how he died. The least we should do is help these people find out what happened. We cannot change the past and take away all the human suffering. But we should do our utmost to make this suffering bearable. Unfortunately, authorities in your country do not seem to care about this. In this kind of situation it is of extreme importance that civil organisations such as HCA Vanadzor care about human beings, in particular about those human beings that are too weak to protect themselves. We wish these people fighting for human rights, peace and democracy all the force they need to sustain their efforts. YOU
CANNOT NOT COMMUNICATE Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression”, and that this right must be guaranteed to every human being on Earth. That means that you have the right to tell others your opinion. You should be able to express your ideas, however unpopular, without fear of punishment. You have the right to communicate your views within your country and to people in other countries. In Armenia, a country which is well profiled outside its borders, and about which there is a lot to say, the local population, especially outside the capital, clearly lacks the necessary access to information. TV- and radio transmissions do not reach everywhere; there is not appropriate access to the Internet, and newspapers are not published and distributed widely. Furthermore not just the quantity of information, but - much more important - its quality appears to be insufficient in a lot of cases. How can people take part in political processes, and in the democratisation and economic development of their country without having a full picture of what is going on in their city, region, in neighbouring states and in the world as a whole? How can they take part in elections, claim their rights in court or simply apply to open up their own business, if they do not clearly know what to do? Are they not much more vulnerable to manipulation and deceit when their right to be informed openly and transparently is denied them? So the right of freedom of speech incorporates the right also to receive information, and the right to know opinions and expressions of others. The Vanadzor office of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly has already gained a reputation for voicing its opinion and criticizing unjust tendencies and acts in the local community. Publishing a newspaper represents a logical step in their struggle to defend the basic rights of the population, and to overcome the clear lack of information in Lori Mars. This and all future issues of “Civic Initiative” will a provoke a lot of exchanges , since readers are encouraged to write to the paper with their questions and opinions. And even if you do not respond to this publication, you are communicating with us – since “you cannot not communicate” (communication axiom of Austrian scientist Watzlawick), because keeping silent is a form of reaction as well. I am proud to congratulate HCA - Vanadzor
on the first number of their newspaper on behalf of the International
Helsinki Citizens' Assembly movement, and I wish them all the best
for forthcoming issues! Siegfried Woeber
HCA Vanadzor works in partnership with ICCO, which gives financial support to the project "The issue of missing soldiers from the Karabakh war" that HCA Vanadzor and HCA Ganja carry out jointly with additional support from IKV. The mandate of ICCO ( Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation), is to finance activities which stimulate and enable people, in their own way, to meet their needs for decent housing and adequate living conditions. ICCO is active in countries in Africa and the Middle East, in Asia and the Pacific, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Central and Eastern Europe.
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Address: Vanadzor city. Tigran Mets 59. Tel. 4 22 68. E-mail: hcav@hcav.am, asakunts@hcav.am
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