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
EUMM Georgia to deploy a transitional planning assistance team in Armenia as EUMCAP ends
Today, 19 December 2022, the European Union Monitoring Capacity (EUMCAP) ended its short two-month mission in Armenia. Deployed as a result of the 6 October Prague meeting between European Council President Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, its short mission coincided with apparent signals emanating from the 27 September meeting between senior Armenian and Azerbaijani officials in Washington D.C. that a peace deal between Yerevan and Baku could be signed by year’s end.
Landmine Free South Caucasus 2022 Campaign
Late last month civil society in Azerbaijan and Georgia marked a day of solidarity for the victims of landmines and the communities that are affected by them. I attended the event held by LINKS Europe and its local partners in Tbilisi while another event was held simultaneously by my good friend Ahmad Alili, Director of the Caucasus Policy Analysis Centre (CPAC), in Baku. I was told a similar event was also held in Yerevan.
Calls for the European Union Monitoring Capacity (EUMCAP) in Armenia to be extended
According to the Armenian Foreign Minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, the temporary European Union Monitoring Mission Capacity (EUMCAP) in Armenia will end on 20 December 2022. Requested by Mirzoyan on 22 September following fierce fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the border a week earlier, the decision to deploy came out the quadripartite meeting of the two leaders and European Council and French presidents, Charles Michel and Emmanuel Macron, in Prague on 6 October before being approved by EU member states on 17 October.

