Deinstitutionalisation, Kutaisi, Georgia

Photographs © Onnik James Krikorian 2007. 

ARTICLES ABOUT DEINSTITUTIONALISATION

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

A mother waits patiently to enroll her son at an Auxiliary Boarding School for children with learning disabilities somewhere in the heart of the Armenian capital. It doesn’t seem to matter to the staff that the twelve-year old isn’t disabled, all the school requires, the Director says, is a medical certificate.

First published 2003

CHILDREN OF THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

At just eight months of age, Tiesa and her two sisters were abandoned by a roadside. They survived by eating roadkill — frogs, in fact — and drinking water from puddles before being discovered. The children, two of them with learning disabilities, were placed in Tbilisi’s Infant House, an orphanage by any other name.

 

First published 2014

LATEST BLOG POSTS

Tbilisoba 2024

Tbilisoba 2024

Earlier this month, Tbilisi celebrated Tbilisoba, the city’s annual harvest festival. Over the years it has changed significantly and seems smaller than before. I first covered the event in 2011 but the best so far remains 2014 when there was more representation of traditional Georgian folk dance and music as well as by ethnic minorities such as the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities. This year, that was held relatively far away from Tbilisi’s Old Town and Rike Park with very little publicity or in some media any at all. Nonetheless, those that attended appeared to enjoy themselves sufficiently and I managed to photo stories.

Can Armenia and Azerbaijan finally reach an agreement by COP29?

Can Armenia and Azerbaijan finally reach an agreement by COP29?

As this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku draws closer, negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan appear to be drifting further apart. Despite hopes that the opposite would be true, a lack of clarity and confusion instead continues to reign. Does the draft Agreement on Peace and Establishment of Interstate Relations contain 17 points or 16? Initially, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had announced that consensus had been reached on 13 points while 3 were partially agreed and there was no agreement at all on a fourth.

Militant Groups Resurface in Armenia’s Struggle Against Radicalization

Militant Groups Resurface in Armenia’s Struggle Against Radicalization

Last month, Armenia arrested several individuals accused of recruiting others to stage a coup in the country. The group has a history of recruiting Armenian citizens as foreign fighters in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Armenian government faces a potential vulnerability from militant groups as progress occurs in the normalization process with Azerbaijan following the 2020 44-day war and recent conflict in Karabakh, fueling discontent among many Armenians.