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
Beyond Waiting: Stories from the Turkey-Armenia border – A Multimedia Exhibition
Having already been shown at the Galata Fotoğrafhanesi Fotoğraf Akademisi in Istanbul last year, the Beyond Waiting: Stories from the Turkey-Armenia Border multimedia exhibition finally hits Yerevan today and will run from 27 August to 7 September at the ACCEA/NPAK Armenian Center for Contemporary and Experimental Art. Without a doubt it’s one of the best cross-border media projects I’ve seen in the region and especially as it presents Armenia-Turkey relations and the closed border in a new and very compelling way.
Georgi Vanyan: The Tekali Process Continues
Recent clashes on the Line of Contact (LOC) separating Armenian and Azerbaijani forces have again raised concerns over the fragility of the 1994 ceasefire agreement. That should have put fighting over the disputed territory of Karabakh on hold, but with a final peace deal still elusive, thousands have been killed in cross-border skirmishes in the eighteen years since. At least three Armenian and five Azerbaijani soldiers died in the latest major skirmishes on the LOC, which reportedly included incursions into Armenia proper, while both sides blamed the other for the violence.
Turkey’s South Caucasus Agenda
Strategically situated as a major conduit for vital energy resources, the South Caucasus has long been an area for competing regional and geopolitical interests. But while competition between Russia and the United States has preoccupied many analysts since 1991 when the three countries making up the region declared their independence from the former Soviet Union, some consider that Turkey could also play an important role in the Caucasus. Despite its well-known problems with Armenia, this is particularly true since tensions between Russia and Georgia culminated in the August 2008 war.