RESPONSE TO THE REFERENCES MADE IN THE ICG REPORT ON NAGORNO-KARABAKH’S GATHERING WAR CLOUDS PUBLISHED ON 1 JUNE 2017

BRUSSELS, 02/06/2017 –  European Friends of Armenia’s (EuFoA) attention has been drawn to the comprehensive and overall accomplished ICG report on Nagorno-Karabakh’s Gathering War Clouds published on 1 June 2017, where our organisation was mentioned.

EuFoA would like to clarify certain points mentioned in the report related to our organisation.

The ‘Opinion polls in Nagorno-Karabakh: Comparative results from 2015 and 2016’ released in November 2016 were not commissioned by EuFoA, but by the Nagorno-Karabakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On 17 November 2016, EuFoA hosted a roundtable briefing showing the result of the abovementioned poll, but was not involved with the research.

EuFoA is an international non-governmental organisation seeking to support integration and build bridges between Armenian and European decision makers and the civil society in the fields of politics, business and culture.

EuFoA is a politically neutral and unbiased organisation, not affiliated to and not acting as the spokesperson of the Armenian government. Our mission is to promote discussions and debates concerning Armenia and the region, not to sponsor Armenian leadership’s or any other entity’s ideas among foreign audiences.

In terms of the content of the ICG paper itself, the quoted slide 21 refers to public perceptions on certain issues, rather than their personal intentions, explained, in the case of emigration, in the slide 37.

The slide 37 showcases that nearly 70% of inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh firmly denounced emigrating, with the overall percentage of those who said they did not plan leaving rising to 79%, in a 1.8% decrease compared to the situation prior to the 2016 April War.