Markets and conferences

Am quite happy at this moment. I'm at one of my favorite cafes eating hazelnut ice cream and they're playing the best of Eric Clapton. This cafe was a wonderful discovery - the owners are British Armenian and serve some of my favorite British foods, including a sticky toffee pudding that might have changed my life. I spent this afternoon at Vernissage, the famous local weekend market. You can find everything from tourist souvenirs to antique cameras to surgical equipment (really). My host sister, Lusine, helped me haggle and kept telling me I was crazy for wanting to look at some of the antiques, like old pocket watches and odd items like horse shoes and keys. Dawnie, lav chi, she kept saying ("not good").

It was a long and hot week. I spent all of Wednesday and Thursday at the USAID funded women & politics conference, which I mentioned earlier. It was quite an experience. The conference brought together over 200 women activists in Armenia and the goal was to develop a women's platform addressing women's policy interests and also advocating for better quotas and capacity-building. A common criticism I hear is that the women's groups in the country don't cooperate enough, so this was an important event. I enjoyed it, particularly meeting the young activists. It was also a very interesting experience just having finished my program at LSE in gender and international development. It was in many ways an exercise in what I was taught not to do. I noticed that the speakers and guests who were there as "experts" were all from outside the country, mostly from the West. There was definitely a power dynamic which I've been cautioned against: the facilitators and "experts" would often tell the participants what to do, what would or wouldn't work, even when they should stop talking. They also asked the men who were there not to take part in the discussions, which I had mixed feelings about (and the audience certainly had mixed feelings about because it made some people get up and leave). Also there were issues with language and overall cultural misunderstandings. While I appreciate that consensus building and democracy in general is messy work, I thought the (international) organizers could have facilitated the work in a more effective and thoughtful way. One of the many reasons it's important to involve a local community in both the planning and execution and, most importantly, substance of such events. I would have opted for more local leadership. All in all though, a fascinating experience, and I got to visit with some familiar faces and meet a lot of new people. I went to a reception at the UN offices as well which was a lot of fun. Also I think it was timely - the parliament is working on the electoral code and the quota laws this week, and international pressure is key. Armenia wants to integrate with the European councils and coalitions as much as possible, and this can be used to leverage women's interests (for example, the current 15% quota for women in parliament was implemented as a condition of Armenia joining the Council of Europe). Currently the parliament is discussing how much to raise the quota and what other mechanisms should be put into place for women's advancement. Of course there's a fine balance between international pressure and building genuine political will internally.

Missouri SOS and political rising star, Robin Carnahan



A participant in traditional Armenian dress

Another issue in discussion in parliament right now is amendments to the criminal code on sexual violence. The Women's Resource Center took the lead on drafting these amendments - here is the article, thanks to my friend, Courtney Harvey: http://www.trust.org/trustlaw/news/armenian-womens-groups-seek-increased-penalty-for-sexual-assault-and-rape/

Incredibly, the criminal code is the only legal avenue for victims of violence; there are currently no laws addressing domestic or gender based violence or even discrimination. And the existing articles in the criminal code on sexual violence can allow for a perpetrator to get away with a fine or several years in prison, at most. There is a real need for women's advocacy here, which is why the Women's Resource Center wants to shift their focus to more long term and strategic needs. I'm happy to be able to help them.

This week I also had an interview with a woman member of parliament. I was surprised at how blunt she was. She basically said there are a thousand problems, women's representation being one of them, but that nothing will change until there are fair and free elections in the country. She talked a lot about the systems of corruption and violence. It was a bizarre experience talking about it while sitting in the house of parliament.

In less intense news, I went to a vineyard yesterday and got to do some planting with the workers in the fields. The plantation is owned by a wealthy Argentine Armenian looking to revitalize Armenia's wine industry. Cognac is still considered a good Armenian product (they say that Winston Churchill only drank Armenian) but the wine here right now is pretty awful. Most of it either tastes like pure sugar or rubbing alcohol. But there's a lot of investment into rebuilding the industry - supposedly Armenia used to have much better wine, but during the Soviet times vodka became much cheaper to produce and also more popular.

I have two weeks left here, so I'm getting a bit frantic to pack as much research and work in as possible. Also trying to practice my Armenian as much as possible. I was happy to discover that I could talk with people at the conference, at least a little, someone even said with a good accent. While Armenian isn't exactly a hard language to learn, some of the sounds are pretty challenging - you have to make some of the hardest guttural sounds from French, Russian and Arabic all in one word sometimes. The word for politics, for example: k’aghak’akanut’yun. A fun one.