Frozen Conflicts Are a Serious Security Challenge

During the session devoted to frozen conflicts in the world it could be heard that frozen conflicts, with their huge potential to escalate at any moment, pose a serious challenge in terms of security and human rights, and in those conditions many initiatives to resolve such conflicts have failed.

Despite the efforts of various international players to resolve these conflicts, they are still black holes in terms of security, minority rights and democracy. Preventing further escalations, supporting reconciliation and building confidence are seen as possible ways for moving forward toward resolving crises in Nagorno Karabah, Cyprus, Transnistria, Kosovo, etc.

Even though economic crises in the European Union have decreased its ability to play a more serious role in peacebuilding and peacekeeping missions, the participants agreed that its soft power is not lost forever, but in the near future, we can expect that emerging powers can become new players who will try to contribute to unfreezing these conflicts as well as the lives of those who live in these areas.

The key point of the session that all speakers made was that there is a strong link between democracy and the possibility of resolving these conflicts due to the fact that democratic states are more favoured to negotiate in peace processes.