Day: October 9, 2024

The price of Azerbaijan’s Azeri Light crude oil saw a slight decrease on October 8.

Summarising the School of Complex Past 2024

We have gathered insights from the School of Complex Past: Migration in the article published on the CSN Lab’s website: https://t.co/dEVKOCspiQ#Migration #Armenia #SouthCaucasus #SchoolOfComplexPast #CSNLab #AltEducation pic.twitter.com/xu7b6EPVjs

— Cultural & Social Narratives Laboratory (@CSN_Lab) October 9, 2024

The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan has agreed to intensify their work aimed to finalize their peace deal draft document, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Tuesday.

“Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have stated in recent months that the draft document of the ‘Agreement on Peace and Establishment of Interstate Relations’ is at least 80% ready,” Pashinyan said speaking at the CIS [the Commonwealth of Independent States] meeting of the heads of member states.

“Foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan reached an agreement recently to intensify the work on finalizing the draft peace treaty,” the Armenian premier, who is currently paying an official visit to Moscow, added.

Addressing last month the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, Pashinyan stated that: “After signing the Peace Agreement with Azerbaijan, we must submit it to the Constitutional Court to verify the compliance of the Agreement with the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia.”

“If our Constitutional Court decides that the Peace Agreement with Azerbaijan is in contradiction with the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia – even though our experts assure that it is not likely to happen, – then we will face a specific situation where constitutional changes will be needed for the sake of achieving peace,” the Armenian premier added at that time.

While in Moscow, Pashinyan is taking part in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit this week. The CIS leaders are expected to sum up the results of Russia’s CIS chairmanship and make plans for 2025, holding one-on-one and expanded talks and signing a number of documents.

President Ilham Aliyev has shared a on his social media accounts on the fourth anniversary of the liberation of Hadrut from Armenian occupation, Azernews reports.

The ongoing wars in the world have significantly intensified the flow of immigrants to Europe in the last ten years. This process has started to increase the risks of danger both inside and on the borders of the countries, Azernews reports, citing EU reports on migration.

On October 8, the European Parliament held debates on “The Democratic Backsliding and Threats to Political Pluralism in Georgia.” MEPs discussed the upcoming elections in Georgia, the ruling party’s anti-democratic actions and anti-EU rhetoric, and the need to adopt a resolution in support of Georgian democracy before the elections. The vote on this resolution is expected on 9 October.

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Georgia is set to lose 121.3 million euros in EU aid due to democratic backsliding, according to the European Commission’s bilateral financial allocations for partner countries for 2022-2024. The European Commission’s announcement reads that these funds are being withheld or reallocated from Georgia “in reaction to backsliding on democratic standards, in particular following the adoption of the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence [Foreign Agents’ Law], targeting Georgian civil society and media.”

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Transparency International – Georgia, a local corruption watchdog, and key election observer slammed the Interior Ministry’s decision to empower U.S.-sanctioned official Zviad Karazishvili, also known as “Khareba,” to oversee the forming of “territorial groups” tasked with “detecting and preventing violations during the pre-election period and on election day.” TI-Georgia calls on the Interior Ministry “to immediately revise his Ordinance and to repeal the Special Task Department Director’s involvement in the “territorial task forces.”

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On 8 October, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) sold USD 48.5 million in an attempt to support the national currency, the lari (GEL).According to NBG, a recent surge in demand for foreign currency, largely triggered by scheduled dividend payments, has put additional pressure on the exchange rate of the lari and the bank opted to intervene in the currency market. “The macroeconomic fundamentals remain robust, characterized by strong economic growth over the past three years and inflation rates below the 3% target since 2023,” concluded the NBG.

A US military base near the Conoco gas field in the Deir ez-Zor governorate in eastern Syria came under a missile attack

Azerbaijan has been intensively implementing large-scale reforms aimed at transforming its economic prospects. The country is actively reducing its dependency on the oil sector and focusing on fostering a more “green” and diversified economy, a shift that has gained even more prominence as Azerbaijan prepares to host COP29.

Israel is likely to give up the idea of striking nuclear sites in Iran as part of its retaliation for the latest Iranian missile attack, because it fears getting drawn into a full-scale military conflict with Tehran

The European Parliament launched discussions on Georgia yesterday with Josep Borrell, the head of the European Union’s foreign policy department, to address the decline of democracy in the country.