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
Opinion: Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict resolution must take social media more seriously
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh has continued for over three decades and peace continues to remain elusive, writes Onnik James Krikorian in this op-ed for commonspace.eu. Populist rhetoric and combative media reports reinforce entrenched positions in both societies, but the situation has become markedly worse with the emergence of a new battleground – social media.
Karabakh Armenian and Azerbaijan Representatives meet at Russian Peacekeeping Force HQ
Representatives of Azerbaijan and the defacto authorities representing local ethnic Armenians today met under the auspices of the Russian peacekeeping force at its headquarters in Khojali. Such meetings are not new but there are a few major differences.
Two-Year European Union Monitoring Mission Deployed in Armenia
A week after the deployment of the European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA), a dedicated 100-person strong observation of the country’s border with Azerbaijan, there’s still much that remains unknown about its activities. However, in two pieces published this week by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) and Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso, I’ve tried to summarise what we do know.