The challenge in question? China. 

Although the United States maintains global dominance, the rise of China as an economic and military superpower is quickly creeping up on the rules-based world order the West so meticulously constructed after World War II. Regarding a 2022 report that characterized China as “the most consequential and systemic challenge to our national security and to a free and open international system,” a senior U.S. Defense Department official confirmed that “Xi Jinping and the PRC leadership are determined that the armed forces should take a more active role in advancing the PRC’s foreign policy goals globally.” As such, China has been able to channel its economic prowess into military spending. In 2023, for instance, Beijing marked a 7.2% increase in planned defense spending.

However, it is not only China’s hard power that should concern the United States and its allies — for China’s investments in global soft power have come to rival, and in some ways supersede, that of the United States. With the Chinese threat looming on the horizon, Beijing’s increasingly ambitious use of soft power to achieve global hegemony poses a greater threat to U.S. interests than ever before. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Of all of China’s economic undertakings — with diplomatic undertones — abroad, the BRI is perhaps the largest, most comprehensive and most ambitious. 

Launched in 2013, the BRI is a massive global infrastructure project led by China aiming to connect East Asia with Europe through physical infrastructure, through development and investment initiatives in 149 countries (accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population and 40 percent of global GDP). The initiative could entail up to $1 trillion in Chinese investments globally — seven times more than what the United States spent under the Marshall plan. Since its original conception, it has expanded to involve Africa, Oceania and Latin America, where China is increasingly upping its global presence through soft power engagement. 

On the one hand, the BRI offers economic benefits to China, including the expansion of international use of the Chinese renminbi currency, increased economic development of its neglected westernmost regions (e.g. finding energy routes through the Xinjiang province that the United States cannot disrupt) and a restructuring of the Chinese economy to avoid the middle-income trap. More importantly, however, the BRI is an effective ploy to increase Chinese influence globally through economic soft power. The Council of Foreign Affairs, for instance, describes China’s global ambitions with BRI as “staggering,” adding that “for Xi, the BRI serves as pushback against the much-touted U.S. ‘pivot to Asia.’” 

Critics say the BRI is a Trojan horse to give China a physical foothold in key regions, creating a “debt trap” for the developing world and thereby increasing China’s diplomatic leverage. 

And the critics are probably right.

Since BRI’s launch in 2013, overall debt to China has skyrocketed, exceeding 20% of some countries’ GDP. To date, BRI accounts for 37% of low income countries’ debt at a whopping $13.1 billion and over 50% of all debt owed by poor countries to official creditors. 

Moreover, lack of transparency and China’s requirement that participating countries use Chinese firms paint the red flag a deeper shade of crimson than it initially appeared. For instance, in Ghana and Zambia, Chinese BRI loans led to sovereign default, and in Malaysia, suspicions around former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad’s sudden shift from being expressly opposed to the BRI toward later announcing his “full support” add to suspicions around Beijing’s true motives. To this point, China refused an invitation to join the Paris Club countries, which promote transparency about foreign debt owed to them. 

The bottom line is that for China, the BRI is inherently political — and many countries in the developing world are now paying the price. For some, that price has been paid in installments of their sovereignty, slowly chipped away by Beijing. 

Arguably, the United States has made rivaling, and in many cases, exceeding, economic investments in regions where China’s BRI has penetrated. However, U.S. economic aid often comes in the form of grants and humanitarian aid — i.e. with strings attached. Many countries, especially those ruled by authoritarian regimes, prefer incurring debt to China, which has an explicit policy of non-intervention in other countries’ domestic affairs, rather than meeting U.S. criteria (such as enforcing free and fair elections, anti-corruption measures, human rights promotion, etc.) to accept U.S. aid. 

China also exclusively recognizes states as the only beneficiary of its aid, while the United States works with NGOs, institutions and governments that share its values — making China’s offer much more attractive to authoritarian regimes unwilling to cede power to democracy.

Moreover, many of China’s other efforts to exert soft power globally are in the same vein as the BRI. For instance, in 2022 China proposed the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, relatively vague international proposals that were joined by 60 partners and endorsed by 80 countries, respectively. Others include the Security Framework Agreement with the Solomon Islands, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership comprising of 15 Asia-Pacific country members and the Shanghai Economic Cooperation Organisation (SCO) comprising of 24 member states and affiliates, including major rivals like India and Pakistan and Armenia and Azerbaijan — paving the way for future potential diplomatic mediation leverage for Beijing.

All of these initiatives seem to share a common goal: to build a post-Western international order where Chinese hegemony reigns supreme. However, many of their successes seem surface-level, at best. Some might argue that considering its massive scale and budget, the BRI has fallen short of its expectations when it comes to tangible outcomes. Since 2013, many of the BRI’s targets have not come to fruition and Beijing’s plan stands to crumble entirely if not properly executed. 

If this is the case, why should the BRI pose any real threat to U.S. hegemony?

In truth, it does not. No amount of soft power in the short-run can propel China to the heights the United States has achieved through decades of diplomacy, forged alliances and established global legitimacy.

What does matter here is Beijing’s ambition — and more specifically, the sheer gall and scale of it. The BRI is not a threat because of what it is, but rather what it represents: a Chinese commitment to laying the foundations for an international world order post-U.S. hegemony. 

While China prepares for the day after (U.S. hegemony falls, that is), the United States must remain proactive in its efforts to prevent such a day from coming. Whether that means strengthening its ties with key allies like South Korea and Japan, or finally crafting a more precise East Asian economic policy, one thing is clear: the status quo spells danger for Washington. 

And unless the United States can meet China’s soft power challenge with exponential ferocity, the roots that take hold will be much harder to weed out in the future.

Unrecognized is perhaps too passive a word — actively denied, systematically erased and grossly misrepresented would be a more accurate reflection of Ankara’s state policy. The same is true for the Greek and Assyrian Genocides which were executed by the Ottomans during the same period, claiming an estimated 500,000 and 300,000 lives, respectively.

Sometimes, numbers speak louder than words: 2 million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire before World War I. By 1922, there were fewer than 400,000 left.

To put that in perspective, an estimated 75% of the world’s Armenian population perished.

It is difficult to articulate the profound impact such a statistic has on a community, and on the country that inherits its legacy. The level of loss and tragedy is unfathomable. 

They say that time heals all wounds. Armenians say, “our wounds are still open.”

Over 100 years ago, 1.5 million Armenian lives were lost to rape, horror and destruction that should have no place in this world. 1.5 million Armenian lives were never brought to justice. Today, millions of Armenians around the world carry the legacy of survival without recognition.

But how do you transmit intergenerational trauma when the trauma is left unspoken? When millions of Armenians today are only alive because one survivor in their family made it out of the carnage? Stories of the brutality endured by our ancestors have been passed down through generations. But for every story told, hundreds more are lost to memory, time and the deeply ingrained Armenian tradition of silence.

Armenians are raised with the knowledge that entire generations of their bloodlines were nearly wiped out. And somehow, they still live. But many do not know their own family’s stories. Instead, they fill the absence of this knowledge with the collective sense of trauma, resilience and the longing for justice that has characterized Armenia, Armenians and the Armenian diaspora for decades.

Armenians are brought into the world conscious that they shouldn’t exist — that their presence must be justified, must mean something, can’t be for naught. We shouldn’t be here, after all. It’s a miracle that we are. An attempt was made on our life — on our community, our identity and our very existence. It builds a collective consciousness that transcends borders and identities.

Armenians — particularly those in the diaspora — are born into an innate sense of purpose and the intense pressure to fulfill it. Those who choose not to take on this crusade, or who stray from its conventional course, are often penalized, their Armenianness questioned and subject to scrutiny. Others become numb, and some get burnt out. Though the fight rages on, fueled by a sense of invisibility in a globalized world where visibility is more attainable, the sense of purpose that often finds young Armenians in their teenage years eventually dulls. 

Now, more than a century later, Armenians find themselves living with something to prove and a life to make worth living — a legacy not born from genocide, but from Turkish denial. A blood-stained, violent kind of denial that fuels the continued ethnic cleansing of Armenians today. It was only July 2020, after all, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to “fulfill the mission carried out by [his]grandfathers,” mere weeks before providing direct military aid to Azerbaijan in its premeditated war against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Moreover, in 2021, the United States become the 34th country in the world to recognize the Armenian Genocide under U.S. President Joe Biden, marking the first time in my memory that Armenia made national headlines. Although the collective sigh of relief, validation and victory was palpable among the Armenian-American community, a new responsibility emerged with it: what next?

That’s the question we try to answer every day. Today, crisis after crisis threatens the Armenian nation — and although the world keeps moving forward, it’s always worthwhile to stop and contemplate the events of the past.

We are our history, and we are what we make of ourselves.

As the only country producing nuclear energy in the Caucasus region, Armenia has relied heavily on nuclear power since 1976. The Metsamor nuclear power plant, located about 35 kilometers from the capital city of Yerevan, generates roughly 40% of the country’s electricity. From its inception as a Soviet-era plant to its current-day operation, the history of the Metsamor power plant is riddled with Russian presence — a presence that tiptoes the fine line of colonization in every chapter it is found.

Today, Russia seems to have taken the long-uncertain future of Armenia’s power plant into its own hands. Currently commissioned until 2026, the life of the Metsamor plant will be extended for another ten years through Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation. 

Moreover, in 2021, Russia expressed interest in deepening its energy investments in Armenia’s nuclear power sector and undertaking larger projects, such as the building of a new power unit at Metsamor. Months later, Russia’s interests would materialize into a signed agreement between Rosatom and Armenia’s nuclear power plant.

Notably, although nuclear power is a large component of Armenia’s energy profile, natural gas remains Armenia’s primary energy import, comprising over 80% of total imports. Russia imports roughly 85% of this natural gas to Armenia while Iran imports the rest, the latter partly in exchange for Armenian electricity exports. 

With Russia deeply entangled in every nook and cranny of Armenia’s energy sector, an emerging pattern of Russian energy colonization in Armenia — a remnant of a lingering post-Soviet legacy three decades after dissolution — seems to rear its ugly head. The Metsamor nuclear power plant is merely one case study highlighting the root causes of Armenia’s crippling energy dependence on Moscow. 

Such a relationship, of course, bears geopolitical implications, as well.

Under the corrupt and criminal leadership of Armenian administrations whose interests aligned more closely with Russia’s than their country’s, Armenia gradually sold its most critical energy infrastructures to Russia. In exchange for securing cheap Russian gas in the short term, the leadership in Yerevan forsook the west’s push for energy diversification. 

Fortunately for Yerevan, after the 2018 Velvet Revolution, Armenia is no longer governed by the corrupt oligarchs who sold their country’s energy sector — and therefore a crucial piece of its independence — to Russia; however, the legacy of their corrupt dealings with Gazprom and Moscow at large will remain for several decades to come.

Furthermore, Russia’s investment in Armenia’s nuclear sector comes amid a broader pattern of energy colonization in the region. Similar offers-turned-deals to invest in Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Belarussian nuclear power have been undertaken by Moscow in recent months and years. 

Meanwhile, the same recklessness Russian President Vladimir Putin employs in his foreign policy seems to be ever-present in Moscow’s nuclear endeavors, which subject the recipient state — or colony, in the Kremlin’s eyes — to significant safety concerns and associated risks.

In securing Yerevan’s long-term dependence for nuclear energy, Russia significantly also gains another degree of leverage over a former Soviet republic whose geopolitical predicament is a national security risk in its own right. Sandwiched between hostile neighbors Turkey and Azerbaijan, not even the Metsamor power plant has been immune to the dangers this entails.

For its own part, Turkey has repeatedly wielded rhetoric about the dangers of Armenia’s power plant, located roughly 15 kilometers from its border, for political gain. Its concerns, cited far too frequently to be genuine, are also largely hypocritical when considering Ankara’s own partnership with Russia for development of its nuclear sector. Moreover, the Turkish- and Azerbaijani-imposed economic blockade of Armenia, which has financially devastated the country, is a main driver for the necessity of Armenia’s nuclear production.

On the other hand, Baku’s aggressive foreign policy, incessant warmongering and expressed ethnic cleansing agenda against the Armenians located both within its internationally recognized borders and outside pose a unique threat in the context of Armenia’s nuclear power plant.

In July 2021, as tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan were boiling over leading up to Baku’s preemptive war against Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan threatened to employ a missile attack against the Metsamor power plant. Self-evidently, the implications of such an attack would be catastrophic, despicable and constitute a direct terrorist threat to Armenia and its neighboring countries.

Ultimately, Armenia’s Metsamor power plant is not only a symbol of Russia’s energy colonization but a testament to the infinitely complex geopolitical disposition Armenia finds itself in. Like every sector of its host country, competing regional interests and Russian hegemony have overtaken Armenia’s nuclear power plant, as well. 

Whether or not the Metsamor plant will weather the storm relies entirely on Yerevan’s long-term planning and the conduct of regional actors. 

The current trajectory, however, seems to be Moscow-bound.

Mher Manucharyan was five years old when Azerbaijan cut the gas supply to Nagorno Karabakh for the second time in 2022. He did not survive.

Today, over 120,000 civilians in Karabakh — including over 30,000 children —- are in danger of facing a similar fate as Azerbaijan’s blockade of the only road connecting Armenia to Karabakh, a lifeline for the local population and its only connection to the outside world, approaches its third week. 

On Dec. 13, Azerbaijan cut the gas supply to Nagorno Karabakh (also known by its indigenous Armenian name, Artsakh) for a third time this year. Although the blockade remains, gas supply was restored on Dec. 16 as a result of international pressure, with concerns mounting over the humanitarian implications of a complete lack of gas for households and essential institutions in the winter cold. As schools were closed, daily life in Karabakh was again uprooted, and civilians were left at the mercy of Azerbaijani terror and Russian incompetency, Mher Manucharyan’s story remained fresh in the minds of the few who know it.

Glimpse from the Globe sat down with his cousin, Maria Manucharyan, to record Mher’s story and shed light on the human cost of continued international inaction.

Mher Manucharyan’s Life and Death

“I always saw Mher as the hope of our future, of Artsakh — and before he died, he told me that the hope of Artsakh will never կտրվել [die]. And then he died, hours after he said that.” 

Mher Manucharyan was five years old and living in Stepanakert, Nagorno Karabakh, when Azerbaijan cut the gas supply for the civilian population in March 2022. 

His cousin Maria Manucharyan described him as a bright child who was “mature” for his age, having grown up surrounded by the threat of Azerbaijani aggression. She said that after every sentence, Mher would add, “for Armenia.”

“He wanted to become a pilot for Armenia,” Maria told Glimpse from the Globe. “He had to eat, because if he died, then one member of the Armenian population would go down — for Armenia. He had to study well so he could become someone, for Armenia. We had another cousin who was deciding between studying languages and engineering — and he asked, which way do you think you could help Armenia more?” 

“He was five years old, but he was so mature,” she added. “I think life matured him.”

Remembering her cousin fondly, Maria spoke of his big hopes and dreams for the future. 

“Planes, planes… He loved planes,” she recalled. “He had such a passion for planes that he learned to read when he was four, before school — Armenian, Russian and the Latin script. He learned all of it by himself, with no help, just so that he could read books about planes. You could talk about flowers, and he would somehow manage to describe a plane. His dream was to be a pilot.” 

Maria also described him as a gleeful child whose presence made those around him smile. “He would somehow manage to give you joy and energy,” she said. “He never tired, he was always full of energy and he always yelled.”

When Azerbaijan cut the gas supply and refused to allow Russian peacekeepers to make repairs to the pipeline, temperatures hovered above freezing as it snowed outside in Stepanakert and heating became essential. Mher’s parents feared for their young son’s health due to his asthma, which made him more vulnerable to the cold. Mher was not allowed to leave his family’s poorly-insulated house in Stepanakert or go to school, out of fear that he could fall ill amid the gas cut.

“And it wasn’t their house, it was someone else’s, because their house is in Shushi,” Maria added. “You know what happened to Shushi.”

Despite his family’s efforts, Mher fell ill on March 21, initially showing symptoms of a simple cold. Within days, he would be admitted to Artsakh State Hospital in Stepanakert and diagnosed with “pneumonia developed as a secondary bacterial infection because of the cold or the flu.”

“The entire hospital was mobilized around him, but nothing could save him,” said Maria. Despite his doctors’ and nurses’ best efforts, some machines did not work due to the lack of gas and the hospital itself was cold. All his doctors could do was keep Mher warm with their limited resources and make him comfortable in the final moments of his life. 

“All I can say is that he didn’t just die, he was murdered by Azerbaijan and they must and will pay for it one day,” his cousin said. “How is it acceptable to just freeze children to death in 2022? How?” 

Mher remained his parents’ “last hope” and “the last of everything they had” after they lost his sister two years ago to an Azerbaijani strike during the 2020 Karabakh War. Born in the city of Shushi, a historical Armenian stronghold that was lost to Azerbaijan in 2020, Mher was his parents’ “last of their memory of Shushi.”

“Everybody normalized the fact that it’s just okay, you can kill these people,” his cousin decried. “Whether it’s him or his sister — just because other states don’t recognize Artsakh as one, it’s okay to kill people who live there.”

She spoke of the unimaginable toll Mher’s passing took on his family. “When I talked to them, it’s like they were not alive anymore. Their eyes were empty,” she said. “I don’t know how to describe it.”

“He was their last shred of hope for a future in Artsakh, but he died along with their hope.”

Azerbaijan Blockades Karabakh

“For Azerbaijan, peace means Armenians not existing anymore. What they want is not peace, it’s literal genocide.”

On Dec. 12, a group of Azerbaijanis posing as eco-activists blocked the Lachin corridor, the only overland access point from mainland Armenia to Karabakh after the 2020 Karabakh War (reports soon emerged exposing their government affiliation). 

When Karabakh’s gas supply was cut again by Azerbaijan on the second day of the blockade, the need for Mher’s story to resurface became apparent, as a warning for international watchers of the dangers of Azerbaijan’s terror campaign against the peaceful civilian population of Karabakh.

A humanitarian catastrophe is now quickly unfolding as food and medical supplies run out, surgeries are canceled, patients in critical condition — including children and infants — are unable to be transferred to medical centers in Armenia and resources essential to the survival of the civilian population become scarce. Moreover, the daily supply of 400 tons of humanitarian aid to Karabakh from Armenia has been obstructed, and over 1,100 civilians have been separated from their families, unable to return home.

Although Armenia faced a devastating defeat in 2020 following Azerbaijan’s premeditated war against Nagorno Karabakh, a self-declared republic with an ethnically Armenian population that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, one of the main points of the ceasefire agreement ending the war was that the critical Lachin corridor was maintained, under the protection of Russian peacekeepers.

Russian peacekeepers have thus far failed to uphold their mandate to maintain unobstructed access to the Lachin corridor and protect the local civilian population from Azerbaijan’s attempted ethnic cleansing of Karabakh. 

On Dec. 24, a group of Karabakh activists marched to the Russian peacekeepers’ checkpoint near Shushi to demand they put an end to Azerbaijan’s blockade, and a massive rally was organized in Stepanakert the following day calling international attention to the humanitarian catastrophe after the Russians failed to uphold their promise to open the road.

Now, human rights activists and monitors in the region warn of grave humanitarian consequences should the Russian peacekeepers and international community fail to ensure the Azerbaijani-imposed blockade is lifted and the civilian population regains access to its critical lifeline to the outside world. The political implications of Azerbaijan employing human rights violations as a terror tactic against the civilian population, meanwhile, is yet another key facet of this entirely manmade crisis.

Despite local activism, efforts by the Karabakh and Armenian governments and a degree of international outcry, including pressure by UN Security Council members, the blockade has now lasted for almost three weeks. Should Azerbaijan refuse to open the Lachin corridor for a longer period, there is the full potential for a humanitarian crisis of massive proportions.

“In order for Armenians in Artsakh to be considered humans and their deaths to not be normalized, Artsakh needs to be recognized,” Maria Manucharyan said in closing. “It is not just a matter of land, it’s a matter of survival for an entire nation.”

Azerbaijan, one of the least-free countries in the world whose human rights record can be considered deplorable at best, is featured prominently as the setting for a sizable portion of the plot. Released earlier this summer, the Netflix original follows the story of CIA agent “Sierra Six,” played by Ryan Gosling, who uncovers corrupt secrets about his superior and triggers a global manhunt after him.

Within the first thirty minutes of the film, the words “Baku, Azerbaijan” fill up the screen in bold silver letters against the backdrop of a shimmering Baku skyline. Several minutes later, the cameras pan over a large Azerbaijani flag, featured front and center in a military funeral alongside Azerbaijani soldiers, flags and — interestingly — a Russian Orthodox priest leading the service (Azerbaijan is a majority-Muslim country). 

The scene, pun not intended, looks like it’s straight out a movie. Only, if the movie was an advertisement for oil-rich, dictatorial countries with something to hide.

Notably, the scenes set in Baku are not filmed in Azerbaijan, but in the Czech Republic. Azerbaijan’s unmistakable Flame Towers, the three skyscrapers that have come to symbolize its rather sudden climb to wealth, are added into the scenes set in Baku with computer-generated imagery (CGI).

The release of the film comes one year after Azerbaijan announced a partnership with Netflix, the world’s leading streaming platform.

The prominent incorporation of Baku as the setting for a sizable portion of the plot is particularly important when contextualized alongside Azerbaijan’s infamous black caviar diplomacy — source of the “biggest corruption scandal in the history of the Council of Europe,” according to the European Stability Initiative — and overarching human rights whitewashing strategy. 

The film merely features the shimmering Baku skyline without bringing any known revenue to the country or creating local job opportunities, indicative of a broader whitewashing agenda at hand. One may argue it creates the impression of a paid promotion that Netflix loaned its ad space to.

The concept is even more troubling when considering Azerbaijan’s atrocious human rights record, which deteriorates every year. Azerbaijan not only continues to severely and violently repress its own citizens’ fundamental human rights, but as recently as 2020, it also launched an ethnic cleansing campaign against the civilian population of the autonomous Nagorno Karabakh region. Azerbaijan has since openly invaded neighboring Armenia, following Russia’s footsteps in its war against neighboring Ukraine. 

It is therefore imperative that influential media companies do not give a platform to countries like Azerbaijan, as promotion in an implicitly positive light without additional context will directly benefit the brutal dictator in power and his clan. This will in turn fuel human rights violations and put vulnerable people further at risk.

Regarding the cooperation with Netflix, perhaps foreshadowing this turn of events, Azerbaijani Culture Minister Anar Karimov expressed last year his intentions to “fully demonstrate the film potential of Azerbaijan to the world,” emphasizing the importance of Russia, a close partner of Azerbaijan, in this process, as well. It appears Azerbaijani investments in soft power are now materializing.

Despite being one of the most expensive films Netflix has produced, The Gray Man has not fared well with critics and audiences. However, it now retains the ranking of #1 Netflix film of the year and #4 of all time. 

Meanwhile, other countries in the region have also made significant headway in Hollywood. For instance, the 2021 film Fast and Furious 9 was filmed, in part, on the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia, generating buzz in the country and receiving praise from Georgian authorities, who took credit for the development. The project generated nearly $10 million for the country and created hundreds of local jobs.

Unlike its two South Caucasus neighbors, Armenia has yet to make such progress in the international film industry. 

For instance, the 2016 film The Promise, a story about the Armenian Genocide, was temporarily available on Netflix and was celebrated by Armenian communities worldwide. However, an influx of negative reviews, allegedly orchestrated by genocide deniers, immediately tanked the film’s ratings.

Looking forward, while each country pursues its own spotlight on the international media stage, Azerbaijan continues seeking new avenues to consolidate dictatorial power in the Aliyev clan’s bloody hands and whitewash its human rights record internationally. 

When human rights concerns arise, however, it is up to media companies and the agency of their consumers to act responsibly and consciously in light of the global implications they perpetrate.

Just moments later, hundreds of phones here at the University of Southern California would be buzzing with notifications bearing the news. The nightmare, it seemed, had breached USC’s walls.

Major towns and communities across southern Armenia came under heavy shelling as Azerbaijani forces invaded Armenia, launching a war of choice. Azerbaijan’s attacks against Armenia left at least 207 dead, 296 injured and over 7,600 displaced.

These are not just numbers, however. For many of the nearly 1,000 Armenian students at USC, they are family and friends.

It has now been a week since Azerbaijan launched its brutal military campaign, taking hundreds of Armenian lives. It has also been a week since USC failed to acknowledge these attacks.

Los Angeles is home to approximately 1 million Armenian-Americans, and among the largest Armenian diaspora centers in the world. In addition to being an academic hub of this diasporic center, USC prides itself in having one of the largest Armenian student body populations in the United States, and hosts one of the leading Armenian Studies institutions in the world in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

As an institution committed to the wellbeing of its student body and inclusivity efforts on campus, however, USC has failed its Armenian community — one of the largest on campus — at every turn. Hundreds of students have yet to receive visibility, resources or even a statement of acknowledgement on behalf of USC administration during what, for many, has been the most stressful and terrifying week of their lives.

Where the university has failed, student activism will not. Alongside students from top universities across the country, USC students have drafted an open letter appealing to the American academic community to denounce Azerbaijan’s invasion of Armenia and support democracy worldwide. USC students, faculty and staff are urged to take a principled stance by adding their names to the letter.

Furthermore, below is a selection of student reactions to the invasion of Armenia, from Armenian students and non-Armenians alike. Glimpse from the Globe lends itself as a platform to make these students feel heard.

USC Students React to Invasion of Armenia

“Please don’t make us feel invisible.” – Anthony Khoory, Senior, Sociology

“The lack of response from USC regarding the recent events in Armenia is extremely heartbreaking. There are almost 1,000 Armenians on campus, and I feel like we are all invisible. No one talks about how our families are getting bombed back home, and we have to deal with all of this college stress while our own university stays silent and overlooks our experiences.” – Eduard Ghazaryan, Sophomore, International Relations

“Having many Armenian friends myself, many of whom are USC students, I have seen the direct impact these events have had on them. I know people that have lost close friends and acquaintances to the violence and attacks perpetrated by Azerbaijan, and the Armenian diaspora is actively seeing their country at risk of being taken and destroyed. Azerbaijan breaks ceasefires, tortures prisoners of war, and attacks innocent civilians. It honestly baffles me that the international community has turned a blind eye so many times to these atrocities. It is especially important that USC recognize its large Armenian student body and take action to support them.” – Giovani Zaarour, Junior, Computer Science and Business Administration

“It is a lonely feeling to be Armenian right now. The weight of Azerbaijan’s attacks and their inhumane treatment of our soldiers is crushing and unbearable. As a transfer student conscious of the large Armenian population at USC, I was expecting that the university would acknowledge and condemn Azerbaijan’s actions. Instead, the silence of students and administrators is deafening. In these moments, Armenians feel as if we are screaming into a void where none of our cries can be heard. A statement in support of our country would make a world of a difference in assuring Armenians that USC cares about our livelihoods.” – Solange Aguero, Sophomore, English Literature

“The crisis currently unfolding between Armenia and Azerbaijan has resulted in the death of hundreds. It has become the subject of international concern, as any time a country obtaining territory from another sovereign state through the use of force should be. USC acknowledged such severity when the war between Ukraine and Russia began. As a student of USC, I ask that the university show the same support now. The emotional impact that recent events hold on Armenian students at USC has been heartbreaking, placing these students in a state of continuous worry, plagued with sleepless nights and a connection to the reality of death that no student should have to experience. USC must not only acknowledge and spread awareness, but must provide resources and outlets that support its Armenian students during this time of uncertainty.” – Matthew Giesecke, Junior, Political Science

“What’s happening in Armenia cannot and should not go unnoticed. The unprovoked, unnecessary and one-sided aggression by Azerbaijani forces is threatening Armenian sovereignty as we speak. Seeing my Armenian friends in so much uncertainty about their homes and futures makes me question the world’s moral standing. You don’t have to be Armenian to see that what’s going on is wrong. You have to be a rational human being to make that distinction. Armenia belongs to Armenians, not to serve Azerbaijani terror.” – Zain Khan, Sophomore, Journalism and International Relations

“A proud moment as a USC student was when USC made a statement supporting Ukraine and provided resources for affected students, even hosting a vigil in support of Ukraine. In a letter sent to all students, USC stated its support for the ideals at the heart of our global community: respecting human rights, freedom and international law. Currently, the same ideals and fundamental freedoms are being attacked in Armenia. There are hundreds of Armenian Trojans who, at the moment, are deeply affected by this. I hope USC makes a statement in support of these ideals and provides affected students with necessary resources.” – Armond Mnatsakanyan, Senior, Philosophy

“This entire ordeal is a nightmare. Two years ago on September 27, we woke up to war and the world remained silent. The nightmare re-occured on September 13. It’s not only upsetting to see sovereign Armenia under attack, but it is absolutely devastating that the institution we have devoted our undergrad years to has chosen to be complacent and remain silent. Our university is located in LA, which houses the largest Armenian population outside of Armenia, yet USC’s silence sadly speaks volumes. It is simply unjust to remain silent when your student population is constantly listening to news and reading articles, to ensure that their families and loved ones are safe. The anxiety and the guilt that follows Armenian Americans is inexplicable –- I wish more professors and students were aware. The only side we need to be on is the side of justice and peace.” – Mariam Manukyan, Senior, Political Science

“Seeing my Armenian friends deeply affected by this is disheartening, and it’s ridiculous that the USC administration has not even commented on the ongoing situation in Armenia. As a university, they have a responsibility to advocate for and support all students, and they are currently not fulfilling that responsibility.” – Piya Garg, Junior, International Relations and Global Business

“I feel deeply saddened and disappointed by the lack of consideration USC has shown for the dire situation my homeland, Armenia, faces as we speak. Azerbaijan is shelling villages in sovereign Armenian territory and is once again committing unspeakable war crimes against my people. The least USC could do is formally condemning Azerbaijani aggression. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said, ‘Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.’” – Irina Harutyunyan, Sophomore, Business Administration

“It has been a week since Azerbaijani forces attacked Armenia. It has been a week, and I have not been given a voice. What may look like a small territory to you is home, heritage and history to me. How many more innocent lives must be taken? How many more children must perish and teenage soldiers be martyred? How many more villages must be shelled and people expelled? And how many more generations of Armenians must fear for their safety and their homeland for you to spread awareness and defend an Armenians’ right to exist?” – Anna Sarukian, Senior, Neuroscience

“I am so incredibly angered by the lack of attention about the invasion of Armenia. The Armenian Genocide was denied and now it’s happening again. Our voices must be amplified by those in power, including the USC administration. It’s important the University stands in solidarity with us Armenian students, who are experiencing a great deal of emotional pain right now. LA is home to the largest Armenian diaspora and USC has hundreds of Armenian students: there is no reason the University should stay silent on this issue.” – Lydia Costantian, Sophomore, Political Economy

“The University’s lack of a response in the wake of the invasion of Armenia has left many of us disappointed. As Trojans, we must speak up against injustice all around the world, and the atrocities that are currently being committed by Azerbaijan are no different. Armenians have always felt home at SC. However, we can’t help but feel neglected when our country’s struggles are ignored by university higher-ups. A written statement condemning Azerbaijan’s attacks on Armenia would be a start.” – Michael Khoylyan, Junior, International Relations

“USC is home to one of the largest Armenian student populations in the country. As a minority on campus we currently feel unheard; however, we are vociferous students and we want to bring this humanitarian issue to the forefront as it is a global issue, not just an Armenian one.” – Seeran Ajemian, Senior, Journalism

“USC stayed silent during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war while Azerbaijan committed inhumane war crimes against Armenians and displaced thousands from their homes. USC has also been silent in the recent Azebaijani attacks on the sovereign territory of Armenia. Given that the Los Angeles area is home to hundreds of thousands of Armenians and the number of Armenian students attending USC, this silence is betrayal. We love this university, but we have not received the same love back. These events have had a very noticeable and detrimental effect on the lives of your many Armenian students, staff and faculty.” – Mher Garibyan, Graduate Student, Biomedical Engineering

“The past few days have been nothing short of a nightmare for me and my Armenian friends on campus. Though the escalation of aggression against Armenia does not come as a surprise, I am deeply saddened to see the lack of support and acknowledgement from USC. With such a large population of Armenian students on campus, and with Los Angeles as the heart of the diaspora, I cannot help but feel a lack of support and solidarity provided for my people. We deserve to feel heard and supported on campus.” – Christine Almadjian, Senior, Law, History, and Culture 

“I came back from Armenia this summer excited to learn about complex algorithms, artificial intelligence and machine learning, aware that one day I could make an impact in these fields not just across the world, but also in Armenia. Now, as I prepare for exams, I am left with the deep pain of having to ask myself if I will have a homeland to leave an impact on. More importantly, what will happen to my people and my family? It feels as though the world’s inability to hear our voice may halt my journey with Armenia just as it was beginning.” – Aren Melkonian, Senior, Computer Science

“It’s not enough to be heard, it’s about taking action. I hope USC will respond to our struggle.” – George Gemayel, Junior, Physics

“It’s just frustrating that the school hasn’t said anything. Other issues and events have received instant responses from the school, but we don’t get anything. It’s just upsetting, especially with the number of Armenians here.” – Hasmig Krikorian, Senior, Law, History, and Culture

“In addition to courses, research, work and internships on their plates, Armenian students at USC need to be constantly worried about their families and acquaintances back home. Armenia has been under constant fear and attack and the Armenians in Armenia are not the only ones paying the cost. No one deserves to be scared for people they love, especially when they are far enough to feel hopeless about it. The atrocities committed against Armenia are not only an international violation but also a human rights violation.” – Nour Myra Geha, Sophomore, International Relations

“Ever since the situation in Armenia escalated, I feel like my voice is unheard. There aren’t many resources on campus to make our voices heard.”  – Nona Nersisyan, Sophomore, Computer Science

This is the reality for post-2020 Armenia. 

Hopes for a brighter democratic future after the successful 2018 Velvet Revolution were soon crushed by violence, hatred and aggression that should have no place in this world. Grappling with the chaos that unfolded following a decisive defeat in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, a burgeoning democracy once full of potential is now left shattered, left to pick up the pieces of a freshly painful past. 

On September 27, 2020, Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev launched an unprovoked, premeditated attack on the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, an autonomous region populated by ethnic Armenians and internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. 

Azerbaijan’s booming petroleum industry allowed its economy to rapidly advance over three decades following a decisive defeat in 1994 during the first Nagorno-Karabakh War. Fueling investments that drastically transformed Azerbaijan’s military landscape, the post-Soviet republic’s oil money empowered Aliyev’s decision to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through military force in 2020. Because the wealth accumulated from crude petroleum exports to EU countries enables Azerbaijani aggression and human rights violations in Nagorno-Karabakh, the EU is best equipped to de-escalate violence in the region by implementing, or wielding the threat to implement, sanctions against Azerbaijani oil.

From Rags to Petrodollars: The Rise of Azerbaijan in the Interwar Era

The first Nagorno-Karabakh War broke out in 1988 and resulted in a decisive Azerbaijani defeat in 1994, with the Soviet Union’s dissolution as the backdrop. 

An autonomous republic gifted to Soviet Azerbaijan by Stalin to curry favor with the Ottoman Empire, the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast has been subjected to violence and ethnic cleansing for over thirty years. After years of ethnic clashes and anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh’s overwhelmingly Armenian population declared independence from Azerbaijan in 1991 using the same mechanism exercised by Azerbaijan to declare independence from the USSR. When Azerbaijan launched a military invasion against Nagorno Karabakh in 1992, Armenia stepped in as guarantor of peace for Nagorno Karabakh and achieved a decisive victory over Azerbaijan in 1994. 

In the war’s immediate aftermath, the two sides signed a ceasefire establishing a status quo that secured de-facto independence for Nagorno Karabakh’s civilian population and military control over the breakaway region with a buffer zone of seven territories. The conflict, therefore, was left in a frozen state for almost thirty years. Due to Armenia’s victory in 1994, the status quo that followed played largely to its favor. 

Burdened with a devastating loss, lack of international support and a dictatorship facing increasing resistance, Azerbaijan in the interwar period between the Nagorno Karabakh Wars became a breeding ground for mounting aggression. However, Azerbaijan held that the window for meaningful negotiations had long passed. International mediators acted in Armenia’s favor by preserving the status quo that granted Karabakh de facto autonomy. One Azerbaijani analyst writes, “the last round of substantial negotiations with the potential to come to an ultimate solution took place in Key West in 2001 when Azerbaijan was still represented by the previous President Heydar Aliyev. In almost 20 years since then, the peace process became less and less substantive.” 

With this pretext, it becomes clear that Azerbaijan, in the interwar period, had become poised for war. 

Armenia took on the role of victor for nearly thirty years. During this time, tensions in Azerbaijan brewed as its loss became a sour point in its recent history, and the lack of international support was salt on an open wound. Moreover, recent developments also contributed to Azerbaijan’s decision to launch a war in 2020. Increased protests surrounding dictator Ilham Aliyev’s falsified elections took place in a severely repressed, unfree Azerbaijan. Such events signaled increasing unrest that posed a threat to the current regime. 

Then, in light of Azerbaijani aggression in the northern bordering district of Tavush, Armenia, domestic tensions boiled over. On July 15, 2020, the BBC reported:

“Thousands gathered in Baku’s Azadliq Square on Tuesday night waving the national flag and calling for the government to mobilise troops and retake Nagorno-Karabakh. This was the largest public gathering in the country for years, with some media reports estimating up to 30,000 people taking part.”

The domestic pressure on Aliyev, then, had reached a tipping point. Taking matters into his own hands, the Azerbaijani dictator waged war against Nagorno Karabakh in 2020. 

During the first Nagorno Karabakh War, the playing field was level between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Therefore, the resolve of the Armenian side and Nagorno Karabakh authorities paved the way for an Armenian victory. However, the balance of power in the region would soon shift in Azerbaijan’s favor. Military strategy could no longer dictate the outcome of a war where 21st-century military technology—especially unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and drones—was involved. Therefore, the second Nagorno Karabakh War in 2020 yielded a drastically different result: a decisive Azerbaijani victory.

In the period from 1994 to 2020, Azerbaijan’s economy underwent a substantial transformation. Its exploitation of petroleum resources for exports and investments yielded exponential growth in all sectors of the Azerbaijani economy and military budget. According to the Asian Development Bank, “Azerbaijan’s diversified economy collapsed with the breakup of the Soviet Union.” Despite the dangers of heavy reliance on petroleum, in 2010, “approximately 80% of all budget revenue derived from the oil industry through the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) and…in 2013 SOFAZ alone accounted for 58% of the state budget revenues. Even leading industries in the non-oil economy are indirectly funded by the oil sector, such as construction and transport.” 

In turn, the huge growth of the Azerbaijani economy since the Soviet Union’s collapse funded an increased military budget. Empowered by its economic growth over the last three decades, Azerbaijan developed a “diversified arms trade market. Its main suppliers are Russia and Israel, but it has purchased a significant amount of arms from Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey and some other countries.” 

Simultaneous to this economic-turned-military development in Azerbaijan, in the interwar period, several diplomatic processes were undertaken to resolve the conflict within the designated OSCE Minsk Group’s framework and beyond. However, with the rise of the second Aliyev presidency, negotiations soon came to a deadlock as Azerbaijan adopted a maximalist position. The only difference was that now it had the power to enforce it. 

Resorting to open military aggression in complete abandonment of diplomatic norms, Azerbaijan launched a full-scale 44-day attack against Nagorno Karabakh’s civilian population in 2020, featuring mortar launchers, artillery, tanks, and illegal weapons like cluster munitions and white phosphorus. 

Moreover, Azerbaijan’s carefully-developed foreign influence via caviar diplomacy and the channeling of petrodollars towards the current regime enable this open aggression. Caviar diplomacy entails using high-end lobbying to enhance Azerbaijan’s image abroad and prevent condemnations of its domestic human rights abuses. In one instance, the Council of Europe became embroiled in such a scandal. 

The Guardian reports, “the European Azerbaijan Society (Teas) regularly takes MPs, MEPs and government officials on trips to the former Soviet state, where they are put up in luxury hotels. On previous trips, members of the Council of Europe visiting the capital, Baku, are among those to have been treated royally.”

While its wielding of petrodollars has allowed Azerbaijan to maintain its image abroad amidst gross human rights violations within its borders, it also props up the current dictatorship. Widespread corruption in the highest ranks of the Azerbaijani government funds the Aliyev clan’s personal wealth through money from the oil industry. As long as a corrupt dictatorship remains in power, the notion that democracies cannot go to war with each other will not prevail. 

Azerbaijan will continue to have the choice to wage war instead of pursuing the diplomatic path, and violence will ensue. 

EU Sanctions Could Break the Cycle of Violence

As a leading consumer of the Azerbaijani petroleum fueling violence in the South Caucasus, the EU can discourage Azerbaijani aggression in Nagorno Karabakh by employing, or wielding the threat to employ, sanctions against Azerbaijani oil. 

In 2020, EU countries accounted for approximately 50% of all Azerbaijani petroleum exports. The largest EU consumers of Azerbaijani petroleum included Italy (the largest at nearly 30%), Greece, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, France, Romania, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Poland, among several others. 

As a country that is cripplingly dependent on its petroleum resources for economic sustenance and its military budget, Azerbaijan relies heavily on EU consumers for nearly half of its oil industry (and, therefore, its economy). Through the EU’s continued business, the government funnels petrodollars to maintain Aliyev’s dictatorial regime and funds military aggression against civilians in Nagorno Karabakh. As such, the EU holds significant leverage over the Azerbaijani economy and, therefore, can wield influence over the violence in Karabakh. 

Since the remaining 50% of consumers of Azerbaijani oil consist of countries such as Turkey, China and Israel, whose own human rights records or declared partnerships with Azerbaijan make them improbable candidates for imposing sanctions, this leaves the EU as the best institution to mitigate this issue through a humanitarian lens. The EU should employ this potential for economic impact to prevent further human rights violations and military aggression. 

Currently, the imposition of sanctions, or “restrictive measures,” requires unanimity by the Council of the EU. As of 2018, the EU solidified the process for a global human rights sanctions regime. The Council now has an established framework to effectively wield targeted sanctions against guilty parties such as oil-rich dictators, oligarchs and their oil industry partners in cases like that of Azerbaijan. 

U.K.-based consulting firm Aperio Intelligence explores avenues for EU sanctions in light of increased violence in Nagorno Karabakh. The firm writes, “The EU could also be moved to implement sanctions against Azerbaijan, as sanctions have previously been on the agenda due to human rights issues in the country. In 2015, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling on the Council to consider targeted sanctions against Azerbaijani politicians for prosecutions against civil rights activists in the country.” 

If the EU began a process of implementing sanctions against major actors in the Azerbaijani oil industry or merely wielded the threat of employing such sanctions, it would be credible enough to coerce Azerbaijani compliance. With the backdrop of EU sanctions on Russia currently ravaging the latter’s economy, the rumblings of such discussions in the EU would go a long way towards alarming Aliyev and sending a message that open military aggression will not be tolerated. 

The government would be forced to reconsider its choice of resorting to violence to resolve the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Instead, its actions may be restricted, deterred and violence against the civilian population prevented. 

The power of sanctions lies in their preventative nature. In Volume 9 of the Chaillot Papers publication, Francesco Giumelli makes a unique case for EU sanctions. “The vast majority of observers would expect sanctions to change the behaviour of targets by inflicting material pain that would force them to change their policies – the so-called ‘pain-gain’ equation,’” he writes. Instead, “sanctions influence targets not only by coercing, but also by constraining and signalling them.”

In the case of Azerbaijan, sanctions would serve to prevent violence and human rights abuses and as an effective restraint on authoritarianism. With the imminent threat of petrodollars — the main source of funding for aggression and preferred avenue of conflict resolution for Aliyev — being cut off, diplomacy would become the most economically viable option for Aliyev. 

In this way, the EU could force Azerbaijan’s hand, pushing it towards peaceful efforts with mediated diplomatic efforts instead of open aggression. 

Moreover, by exercising the prospect of economic sanctions to restrain Azerbaijani aggression, the EU would impose an effective constraint on Aliyev’s authoritarian power against his own citizens. Though it is improbable that the threat of such sanctions would push Azerbaijan towards democratic norms, it would at the very least ensure compliance with international standards for conflict resolution. 

Russian gas and the EU: Where Does Azerbaijan Fit In?

Among several objections to the prospect of EU sanctions on Azerbaijani oil, one significant speculation is that such a move would undermine the long-term EU agenda to decrease resource dependency on Russia. 

Azerbaijan has long been regarded as a possible alternative to Russian oil and gas. However, Aliyev’s foreign policy decisions since the 2020 Nagorno Karabakh War seem to eliminate this concern. One day ahead of Putin’s unprecedented invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement cementing their alliance. The deal included pro-Azerbaijani points on the Nagorno Karabakh issue, signifying that Azerbaijan was compromising its traditionally pro-Ukraine position to advance its military interests. In turn, Russia secured an important guarantee. 

EurasiaNet reports, “As per point 25, Azerbaijan and Russia agree to ‘refrain from carrying out any economic activity that causes direct or indirect damage to the interests of the other Party.’ Azerbaijani officials have promoted the idea that gas from their fields in the Caspian Sea could act as a replacement for Europe should Russia cut off its energy exports as a consequence of the Ukraine conflict.”

Aliyev decided to take Azerbaijani gas off the table as an alternative to Russian gas in a calculated move to advance his interests in the Nagorno Karabakh issue. By showing a firm hand on his foreign policy, Aliyev curries domestic favor and maintains his position at the head of the government. Therefore, the agreement effectively rendered obsolete the prospect of sanctions compromising any EU agenda on Russian energy dependency. 

Instead, this development strengthens the case for EU sanctions against Azerbaijani oil. Aliyev has become dangerously comfortable with the constant source of wealth from oil exports, to the point that he sacrifices other significant economic opportunities — and Azerbaijan accounts for only 5% of the EU’s oil imports, making it a less costly venture for the EU. In tandem, these realities make a compelling case for sanctioning Azerbaijani oil.

Ultimately, Azerbaijan’s oil money empowered Aliyev’s decision to solve the Nagorno Karabakh conflict through military force in 2020. As a result, the wealth accumulated from petroleum exports to EU countries enables Azerbaijani aggression and human rights violations in Nagorno Karabakh, making the EU the best-equipped institution to curb violence in the region by employing sanctions on Azerbaijani oil. 

Mothers in Karabakh raise children in bunkers, only to send them to war when they’re of age. How many is too many? 

The EU must wield its power positively to break the cycle of violence because soon, it may be too late. 

This is what it took to effectively eradicate systematic forced labor in Uzbekistan. And still, remnants of the old system persist.

In the field of human rights work, success stories are few and far between. The decades of dedication, hard work and undying perseverance of human rights defenders, therefore, makes each rare instance all the more remarkable. With cautious optimism, the case of forced labor in the Uzbek cotton harvest now earns its label as a human rights “success story” of its time. 

Tracing the practice back to the Soviet Era, forced cotton picking in Uzbekistan finds its origins in cotton production quotas under the 1920s Gosplan system. Although thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its ill-fated economic policies, the practice of forced labor which fueled decades of human rights abuses and rested on the fulfillment of a cotton quota continued well into the 21st century. 

The Uzbek cotton harvest, involving over 2 million laborers as the main source of employment, is the world’s largest seasonal labor mobilization. At its height, under the former president and long-standing dictator of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov, who died in 2016, the practice of forced labor involved millions of people being forced to pick cotton against their will under abusive conditions, including children.

Professor Steve Swerdlow, a human rights lawyer who teaches in the University of Southern California’s Department of Political Science and International Relations, has closely monitored Uzbekistan’s human rights record and the cotton issue for years. He described the process in an interview with Glimpse from the Globe. “Several million citizens would be mobilized roughly between the months of August and November every year to harvest what many called Uzbekistan’s ‘white gold’,” he stated. “Cotton, as a raw material for an economy that needed cash, was a very important commodity.”

Under the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan’s cotton accounted for 70 percent of irrigated land under cultivation in the republic and for more than two-thirds of the total cotton production in the USSR. Cotton became such a valuable cash crop for the Kremlin that intense agricultural practices led to the drying of the Aral Sea, one of the worst ecological disasters in the world. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Karimov recognized cotton as an important source of revenue for Uzbekistan. He continued adhering to Moscow’s heavily state-run economic system, creating annual cotton quotas which fueled the practice of forced and child labor. “For many, many years it was an important source of revenue for Karimov’s often closed and isolated economic system,” Swerdlow explains, “It played an important role in propping up a dictatorship.”

The human cost of this lucrative Karimov-era practice was steep. 

“The way it worked under Karimov,” Swerdlow details, “is that local officials from what are called ‘mahallas’ [neighborhood committees], assisted by the police, would go from door to door to ensure that every family was contributing to the cotton harvest. They would pressure citizens, even single mothers, vulnerable citizens, people who were ill, the elderly, to sacrifice their time and participate in this mobilization for several months out of the year.”

Living conditions were abysmal, workers’ rights nonexistent, wages alarmingly low and compensation frequently withheld. Workers faced abusive conditions picking cotton. Students were often pulled out from schools and universities to participate in the harvest, and foreign journalists, NGOs and local civil society were ruthlessly suppressed, leaving no room for outside scrutiny. As the human rights violations amassed, Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest in the Karimov period remained “one of the only examples in the world where a government was controlling, coordinating, mobilizing and organizing the forced labor from start to finish,” said Swerdlow.

In 2007, in response to the decades of systemic forced labor and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, activists across a number of sectors formed the Cotton Campaign. The Cotton Campaign, where Swerdlow acted as a representative for Human Rights Watch from 2010 to 2019, works with governments, local civil society, companies and foreign investors to advocate for Uzbek rights and address the issue of forced cotton picking. Since its formation, the efforts of the campaign, in conjunction with ongoing international diplomatic efforts, have seen significant outcomes.

The first major accomplishment of the global effort to eradicate forced labor in Uzbekistan came in 2014, when it succeeded in exerting enough pressure on the Uzbek government to allow the International Labor Organization (ILO) into the country to monitor the cotton harvest — a feat all the more significant when considering it took place during the period of Karimov’s brutal regime. Since the end of the Karimov era, marked by his death in 2016, systematic child labor effectively ended within a few years of the ILO’s monitoring. Each subsequent year, due to the ILO’s extensive monitoring and fieldwork, the government dramatically reduced adult forced labor by increasing wages and ensuring compensation. 

Currently, Professor Swerdlow is working alongside human rights defenders in Uzbekistan to evaluate the outcomes of the 2021 cotton harvest. He outlines the results of his monitoring. 

As of late 2021, the “reporting, research and monitoring [by human rights defenders]leads to the conclusion that forced labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton sector is no longer systematic. That is, the system in which central government officials forced people to pick cotton against their will no longer exists.” The ILO corroborates this claim in a 2020 report, concluding that “systematic forced labour did not occur” and “child labour is no longer used during the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan.” The end  of systematic forced labor in the Uzbek cotton harvest marks a major victory for the human rights community. 

This movement’s success — including diplomatic missions, the formation of an international campaign and the work of the ILO — was not without the cooperation of the private sector. The campaign spearheaded efforts to enact an international boycott on Uzbek cotton, a pledge to which over 300 brand-name retailers became signatories. 

By committing to not source Uzbek cotton, a source of revenue upon which Uzbekistan’s state-run economy is heavily dependent, the business sector played a huge role in forcing the government’s hand on the issue. Notably, the cotton pledge remains in place to this day, continuing to cripple the economy amidst ongoing efforts to address human rights concerns — leverage over the Uzbek government that the Cotton Campaign seems unwilling to lose.

The Uzbek government, the role of which can be characterized as twofold, further contributed to the initial success of the campaign. 

Firstly, the death of Islam Karimov in 2016 and the subsequent rise in power of Shakvat Mirziyoyev marked a drastic shift in Uzbekistan’s political climate as the nearly thirty-year reign of a brutal dictator came to a sudden end. Although the deeply-rooted authoritarian legacy of the post-Soviet Era remains ingrained in Uzbekistan’s institutions, Mirziyoyev’s reform-oriented agenda has facilitated huge strides forward in the country’s human rights situation. Since his rise to power, Mirziyoyev has issued several presidential decrees aimed at addressing child and forced labor practices in the country, culminating in a landmark 2020 decree which saw the complete abolition of the state-sanctioned cotton quota — the main driver of forced labor in the Uzbek cotton harvest.

Mirziyoyev’s commitment to bettering Uzbekistan’s global image, transforming the economy through privatization and opening the country to foreign investment by defrosting the isolated Karimov-era status quo have been instrumental in furthering the effort to end forced labor. 

The political will shown by the Uzbek government in recent years to cooperate with some human rights defenders on the issue has been instrumental to the effort’s success. “In the Uzbek case, there was a critical mass of government officials who were willing to adapt and recognize that the criticism of their record had to be addressed,” Swerdlow recounts. 

Officials like Senate Chairwoman Tanzila Narbaeva, an advocate for reform, and President Mirziyoyev have been key in ensuring government cooperation with global efforts and diplomatic missions by the United States, EU and other partners. In December 2021, for instance, exiled human rights activist and prominent Uzbek voice Umida Niyazova made an important visit to Uzbekistan, where she met directly with the Minister of Labor to discuss reforms in the cotton sector. 

“While there’s an adversarial relationship with governments, you also have to be ready for dialogue. This is one of those really interesting examples where the government changed its position.” According to Professor Swerdlow, the case of Uzbekistan speaks to the need for flexibility in any human rights campaign. “There may come a time when the government that you’ve been fighting for ten years says, ‘we’re ready to talk.’”

Moreover, Swerdlow emphasizes the importance of empowering civil society in any human rights campaign, pointing to its instrumental role in ensuring Uzbek workers’ rights are protected moving forward. 

“The Uzbekistan model provides some lessons in terms of the use of creative tactics, and always giving voice to civil society first.” The Cotton Campaign similarly highlights the role of “an independent, vibrant, and diverse civil society” in “ensuring the success of the reform process,” and the need for local monitoring of the cotton harvest by international and local groups without interference.

However, while the global movement to eradicate forced labor in Uzbekistan has been largely successful, significant obstacles remain. Although systematic, state-sanctioned forced labor has come to an end, instances of forced labor and human rights violations in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields continue to be documented. Mirziyoyev’s reforms have seen Uzbekistan through a transition from a state-run economy (a remnant of the Soviet era) to one that is more privatized and market-based. However, these reforms have given rise to new challenges in human rights work. 

The Uzbek government has “transitioned to a new model known as the cluster system, where private manufacturers and farmers group together in private entities, and essentially privatize the sector,” Swerdlow explains. “But there are still many aspects of the system that human rights activists point to as continuing some of the abuses of the past. Some of the key problems are rooted in the lack of independent feedback or complaint mechanisms that workers could use to raise concerns about the conditions in the fields, their contracts or other issues. The legal basis upon which workers are contracted requires more regulation and safe working conditions that comply with the international labor conventions Uzbekistan has signed need to be implemented.”

Another important concern is the lack of independent unions and absence of collective bargaining to protect workers’ rights. For instance, Uzbekistan’s first independent labor union, Halq Birligi, was founded in March 2021 by laborers in the Indorama Agro cotton farm. Within a week, members of the union were already facing harassment, threats and demands to disband by local authorities. 

Moreover, Swerdlow reports, “Some of the current obstacles relate to how workers’ rights and the conditions of their labor are protected in the fields, from their access to healthcare, proper protective clothing, and sanitary conditions.” Instances of wages being withheld by farmers and picker leaders and disputes over the amount of cotton collected are also regularly reported. As such, protection of workers’ rights is one of the central challenges associated with the emergence of the cluster system — challenges that can only be effectively addressed if Uzbekistan’s civil society is empowered to address them.” 

Another challenge is the legacy of authoritarianism that still lingers in Uzbekistan. Uzbek security services continue to exercise an outsized influence just as they did during the Soviet and Karimov eras, preventing local human rights organizations from obtaining registration with the Ministry of Justice that would allow them to monitor the cotton harvest. The Ministry of Justice has denied registration to numerous independent civil society and volunteer groups, limiting their ability to monitor the cotton harvest and thus strengthen the sector overall.

“Fear of police and a general reluctance to complain against powerful authority figures present major obstacles for workers’ rights,” Swerdlow explains. When there is no democracy and no meaningful civil society engagement, giving voice to the victims of this abusive system becomes an even more daunting task.

The empowerment of civil society, registration of NGOs and unionization remain major obstacles in the movement to completely eradicate forced labor in Uzbekistan. 

However, challenges also emerged in the process of the human rights work that went behind this movement. Professor Swerdlow reflects on some of the insights gained from his work with the Cotton Campaign. 

“No matter the human rights issue at stake, coalitions are a messy business. Human rights work is never linear. It takes blood, sweat and tears to form successful coalitions. In the effort to end forced labor in Uzbekistan, while centered in Uzbekistan’s civil society, the coalition encompassed actors from vastly different sectors and there were certainly moments when conflicting priorities would emerge, and some companies were more proactive than others in joining the effort.”

Ultimately, however, success in ending forced labor would never have been possible without the collective efforts of civil society actors, the business sector, government officials and diplomats alike. 

“This is not only a story about international actors,” Swerdlow concludes. “By far, the heroes of this story are the workers and the local human rights defenders themselves, who risked a great deal to speak truth to power. In so doing, they changed Uzbekistan’s trajectory forever in a positive direction” 

The case of Uzbekistan holds important lessons for human rights work globally. As a success story, the movement to eradicate forced labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton sector highlights the power of coalitions and international cooperation in addressing the challenges of our time — none of which would have been possible without the involvement of all the actors involved. 

Already, the successful effort to end forced labor in Uzbekistan has lent momentum to efforts to a parallel project to eliminate forced and child labor practices in Turkmenistan, where ruthless, totalitarian, authorities have maintained one of the world’s most repressive systems for decades, even in comparison to Uzbekistan at the height of the Karimov’s rule. Takeaways from the human rights work in Uzbekistan’s cotton sector are also relevant to the situation in Xinjiang, where hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in China are forced to work in deplorable conditions, subject to gross human rights violations, and to exploitative labor practices in West Africa and Thailand. 

Uzbekistan illustrates the importance of engaging multiple actors in addressing  complex human rights challenges. In this case, the combined efforts of local civil society with the Cotton Campaign, diplomatic missions, the ILO, the business sector and Uzbek officials were instrumental to this success. 

One can only hope that the “success story” of Uzbekistan will be not an anomaly, but the first of many more to come. 

Despite significant progress since 2003, a glaring stain remains on Georgia’s human rights record — one that the government is seemingly unwilling to address. That flashpoint is the rights of ethnic minorities. 

Ethnic minorities make up approximately 13% of Georgia’s population today. Although a small republic, Georgia hosts a myriad of diverse ethnic groups, two autonomous republics (Abkhazia and Adjara) and a de-facto independent region (South Ossetia). According to the 2014 census, the two largest demographics are Azerbaijanis (6.2%) and Armenians (4.5%), while ethnic Russians, Abkhazians, Ossetians and other groups comprise the remaining 2.8%.

Although Georgia has seen several changes in leadership and a complete democratic overhaul of state institutions in the decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government’s stance on ethnic minorities has remained constant and uncompromising, embracing xenophobic rhetoric and policies which subject Georgia’s minorities to continued discriminiation, violence and exclusion. Some attribute Georgia’s continued oppression of ethnic minorities to its formerly privileged position under the USSR, when it reaped the benefits of having ethnic Georgians like Stalin and Beria in the highest ranks of Soviet leadership. Others argue that the United States and EU are complicit in facilitating these abuses. 

When Georgia first initiated efforts to join the Council of Europe as a member state, it became a signatory of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which is “the first legally binding multilateral instrument concerned with the protection of national minorities.” To date, Georgia has violated nearly every article listed under Section II of the convention. Due to continued Western interest in the region, however, European countries have largely turned a blind eye to Georgia’s violations, allowing the oppression of ethnic minorities to continue. 

Moreover, Article 38 of the Georgian Constitution holds that citizens shall be afforded the same rights regardless of ethnicity, and in accordance with international law “shall have the right to develop freely, without discrimination and interference, their culture.” 

Ethnic minority mistreatment in Georgia, therefore, constitutes a direct violation of both domestic and international law, revealing a consistent pattern of illegal state-sanctioned abuse and systematic suppression which continuously stunt its Western ambitions. 

Armenian Exclusion and Cultural Genocide

The second-largest ethnic minority in Georgia, Armenians have played a significant role in its sociopolitical environment from antiquity to modern day. Despite sharing a Christian heritage and a border to the South, the relationship between Armenia and Georgia remains complex, tainted by geopolitical realities, conflicting alliances and cultural tensions. 

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Georgian government’s treatment of ethnic Armenians significantly deteriorated, fueled by xenophobic sentiment and widespread suspicion amidst pro-Russian separatist movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. 

Free to govern as they wished, independent Georgia began targeting ethnic minority rights in the Armenian-majority Samtskhe-Javakheti and other minority regions through “Georgification,” adopting nationalist policies of exclusion from educational and employment opportunities. 

Georgian universities in minority-populated areas began teaching only in the Georgian language; and in 2005, a national entrance examination was established which tested Georgian language and literature for acceptance to universities, among other subjects. Moreover, private institutions that teach in minority languages like Armenian are not accredited in Georgia. Because most ethnic minorities living in minority regions, like the Armenians of Javakheti, speak their minority language, they are forced to seek higher education in their kin-states instead, having been deprived of educational opportunities in Georgia due to the imposed language barrier. 

For example, after Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh fled to Kakheti during the first Nagorno-Karabakh War in the 1990s, several Armenian villages were completely Georgified. Georgians would not employ them due to their ethnicity, they could not gain admission to universities and receiving an education in Armenian proved to be an obstacle. Georgia’s discrimination against ethnic minorities extended to localities at the grade school-level, too. The number of schools in minority-populated regions is relatively low, and although most schools in Javakheti are taught in Armenian, the teaching of Georgian language and literature has been mandated and enforced in recent years. 

To the frustration of the Armenian community, for example, Armenian literature is excluded from school curricula, and Georgian-language teachers in Armenian schools receive a higher salary. Exclusion from educational and employment opportunities guarantees that Armenians in Georgia have no future unless they assimilate. 

Furthermore, in Tbilisi, the ongoing destruction of Armenian churches and burial grounds in attempts to erase evidence of Armenian presence remains a significant human rights concern. Using the Georgian Orthodox Church as an extended arm of the state, the Georgian government has carried out a program of Georgifying or destroying Armenian cultural sites in attempts to rewrite history. 

The Church declares Armenian churches, often marked by khachkars and other features unique to Armenian Apostolic churches, are Georgian, thereby empowering authorities to seize and destroy evidence of its origins. The government and Orthodox Church then either reclaim the church as Georgian, effectively rewriting history, or destroy it to build a Georgian one over it, sometimes over Armenian burial grounds. Modern technology and photographic records of the targeted Armenian churches now provide evidence of these violations. 

It appears that Georgian authorities often erase, pressure and rob the culture of ethnic minorities within their territory. 

The Human Cost of Autonomy: Abkhazia and South Ossetia

Georgian violations of ethnic minority rights in Abkhazia and South Ossetia escalated severely after the collapse of the USSR. 

Many of the same obstacles facing the Armenian community in Samtskhe-Javakheti, namely exclusion from equal opportunities and forced assimilation, were true for ethnic Abkhazians and Ossetians living in the autonomous republics, escalating tensions in these regions while Georgia was still part of the Soviet Union. However, the events leading up to the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, its course and its aftermath have worsened human rights violations against ethnic minorities, which have now come to be characterized by violence, ethnic cleansing and hostility. 

Briefly delving into the history of the conflict, the “Abkhaz and South Ossetians wanted to preserve, and remain within, the Soviet Union considering their survival as ethno-cultural communities distinct from the Georgian majority to be in acute danger in an independent Georgian state.” When Georgia declared its independence in 1991, fighting broke out first in South Ossetia and then in Abkhazia, prompting a war with pro-Russian separatists on one side and Georgian militia and government forces on the other. 

According to the timeline of the UN Refugee Agency, tensions first rose during the perestroika period under Gorbachev. Georgian authorities would dictate that anyone living in Georgia had to become Georgian, subjecting ethnic minorities in the autonomous regions to oppression. “As Georgians increasingly organize[d]to assert their nationalism under Zviad Gamsakhurida, the Abkhaz in turn mobilize[d]to protect their identity and status.”

Some scholars argue that the Georgians created such an oppressive environment where resistance by the Abkhazians and South Ossetians was justified. They were faced with an existential threat: ethnic minorities could assimilate and become Georgian, or leave.

Faced with growing pressures by Georgian authorities, the separatist movement unfolding in Abkhazia and South Ossetia prompted other ethnic minorities to join the resistance. In Abkhazia, for example, the Armenian population outnumbers the Abkhaz and there is a significant Russian population. In one instance, the 80-year-old mother of an Armenian community leader in Abkhazia was assaulted and burned with a lamp by Georgian militia. The Georgian forces committed inhumane, gross violations of human rights, turning the Armenians against them.

During the period of fighting, human rights violations by Georgian and Abkhaz forces were documented by Human Rights Watch, corroborating the claim that the majority of abuses were committed by the Georgian side. Once Abkhaz forces gained control of Abkhazia and fighting ultimately died down, however, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons were denied a chance to return, the majority of whom were Mingrelian Georgians. 

Fast forwarding to the 2008 flare-up of the conflict, after successfully reintegrating the autonomous republic of Adjara into Georgia, Saakashvili set his sights on Abkhazia and South Ossetia next. Although a tactful combination of diplomacy and threat of force seemed to work in Adjara’s case, where the population was ethnically Georgian but religiously Muslim, the same strategy was difficult to implement in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where it was a matter of ethnic conflict.

Unlike Armenian and Azerbaijani ethnic minorities, who have kin-states bordering Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia had no such option. Faced with the threat of Saakashvili, who had the full backing of the United States and Europe, the separatists appealed to Russia for aid. Russia deployed troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to fight on behalf of the rebels, acting opportunistically to eliminate Georgia as a viable candidate for NATO.

Moreover, reports emerged that the Georgian side had been the one to instigate the conflict. Sir Anthony Brenton writes, “As confirmed by an exhaustive EU investigation after the event, it was the Georgians who fired first. They attacked Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, killing some.” According to Brenton, who was the British ambassador to Moscow at the time, “It was then politically impossible for the Russians not to react as they did.” Saakashvili did not deny these allegations. 

It appears that Georgian President Saakashvili, enjoying the full backing of the West and a recent success in Adjara, was determined to pick a fight with Russia. Days later, when Russian tanks were rolling towards Tbilisi with no signs of slowing down, Saakashvili would come to regret that decision. 

Since the war in 2008, which saw Russian military intervention on behalf of Abkhazian and Ossetian separatists, the situation has remained unresolved by international standards. Though Abkhazia and South Ossetia have gained de facto independence and recognition from a handful of countries, including Russia, the majority of the international community sees the regions as Russian-occupied. 

The case of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is a powerful example of how continued discimination, oppression and abuse of ethnic minorities can escalate quickly into an ethnic conflict with geopolitical implications. For Georgia, the unwillingness to uphold protections for minority rights ultimately cost them their territorial integrity, thousands of lives and their ambitious NATO aspirations.  

The Case of the Exiled Meskhetian Turks

When discussing the rights of ethnic minorities in Georgia, one of the most prominent cases is that of a group which no longer presides in Georgia: the Meskhetian Turks. The history of the Meskhetian Turks paints a particularly painful picture of a people who have been in perpetual exile for almost a century. 

In 1944, when Stalin and Beria labeled the Meskhetian Turks an “untrustworthy population,” Soviet troops forcibly deported them to the Central Asian Soviet republics, effectively ethnically cleansing the Georgian region of Meskheti, today Samtskhe-Javakheti, of Muslims. Since then, the Meskhetian Turks have “survived a mass deportation from Georgia, interethnic programs in Uzbekistan, and ethnic cleansing in southern Russia.” Though Stalin’s policies were driven strictly by nationalism and paranoia, many speculate that his distrust of Meskhetian Turks stemmed from the close proximity of Samtskhe-Javakheti to Turkey, where Meskhetian Turks could pose a potential threat, in Stalin’s eyes, of subversion or collusion with Turkey. 

In the late 1980s, under Gorbachev’s perestroika, groups that had been displaced during the Soviet Union, including Meskhetian Turks and Crimean Tatars, expressed a desire to return to their homelands. The Georgian side, however, employed all possible methods to prevent the return of the Meskhetian Turks, because those regions had been largely resettled by Georgians.

One of the reasons Georgians most often cite for their refusal to accept the exiled Meskhetian Turk population is the unfounded claim that Armenians are opposed to the return of ethnic Turks in the region. Since the 1980s, Georgia has pushed the narrative that in addition to not having the resources to accommodate such a repatriation, the return of the Meskhetian Turks would instigate ethnic conflict between Armenians and Turks. Justified on these grounds, Meskhetian Turks “who returned spontaneously to Meskheti were sent back” by Georgia, and “[e]ven those who tried to visit their native lands as tourists were denied the right to do so.” 

However, the regions of Samtskhe-Javakheti which the Meskhetian Turks had formerly inhabited are populated today by ethnic Georgians. Very few Meskhetian Turks would return to regions where the majority of the Armenian population is concentrated, posing no real threat of ethnic tension. Although Georgian officials continued pushing this narrative, the official stance of the Armenian leadership in Javakheti confirmed that they had no objections to the return of the Meskhetian Turks.

As a result of Georgia’s uncompromising stance on the issue, which has remained constant despite multiple changes of administration in Tbilisi, the indefinite exile of the Meskhetian Turks remains a stain on Georgia’s human rights record and a testament to its oppressive treatment of ethnic minorities.

The Achilles’ Heel of Georgia

Georgia has long been revered as the bastion of democracy in the South Caucasus. With powerful ambitions to join NATO, Westernize their institutions and establish strong ties with the United States and European Union, Georgia has been the West’s partner of choice in the post-Soviet region time and time again. 

However, Georgia has a weakness. 

Unlike most modern Western democracies, Georgia is unwilling to compromise when it comes to the question of ethnic minority rights. In recent decades, Georgian authorities have not taken any steps to address the discriminatory, xenophobic and oppressive policies against ethnic minorities. The commitments they made to the Council of Europe remain unfulfilled, facilitated by Western complicity in turning a blind eye to Georgia’s abuses. 

Moreover, the state of ethnic minority rights in Georgia seems to only be deteriorating, as tensions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain unresolved; ethnic minorities continue to be subjected to forced assimilation, erasure of history and exclusion; and displaced populations remain in exile. 

Recent history has come to show that Georgia’s discriminatory policies towards ethnic minorities remains an obstacle in its path towards Westernization and progress. Armed conflict with Russia, a war sparked by Georgia’s inability to respect minority rights in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, effectively prevented Georgia from realizing its hopes to join NATO — and Saakashvili’s position as instigator of the conflict put Western allies in the difficult position of having to re-evaluate the value of partnership with Georgia. 

Georgia’s uncompromising stance on the return of Meskhetian Turks in exile and its discriminatory policies towards Armenians and Azerbaijanis highlights nationalistic and xenophobic attitudes which, at least on paper, are frowned upon by the Western world. The systematic erasure of Armenian culture and history also raises serious human rights concerns regarding cultural genocide, a particularly sensitive issue when it comes to a group previously subjected to genocide. 

The solution is clear. If Georgia is holding onto hopes for integration into Western frameworks in the future, it must first change its position on ethnic minority rights and take the necessary steps to afford all its citizens, regardless of ethnicity, equal protection under the law as guaranteed under its Constitution. 

Because if Georgia does not learn from its mistakes, the next time ethnic tensions explode in the oppressive environment it has created, it may cost Georgia much more than its territorial integrity and a NATO alliance.

In what can only be characterized as a regression of the significant strides forward made during the 2003 Rose Revolution, Georgia’s ruling party has undertaken harsh crackdowns against their opposition in recent years, targeting leaders of the United National Movement (UNM) among others. From political activists to the former president, the ruling Georgian Dream party’s arrests and prosecutions of UNM leaders raise serious questions about political motivations, the state of human rights and the future of democracy in Georgia. 

Under the de facto leadership of an oligarch with deep economic ties to Russia and a changing dynamic of engagement with the West, the Georgian Dream party’s new direction sets Tbilisi down a dangerous trajectory. Recent developments have prompted calls for increased monitoring by human rights groups, civil society organizations and foreign policy experts in light of political patterns which spell trouble for the Georgian people and Western allies.

Georgia’s political evolution in the decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union sets the stage for understanding the motivations behind the Georgian Dream’s political persecutions, what this means for Georgia’s democratic future and what it means for the West. 

Background

Tucked away behind the vast Caucasus Mountains and the sprawling Black Sea lies Georgia, a small country with great political significance. Its recent political history is one riddled with a dichotomy of reforms and conflict, democratic progress and setbacks, mobilization and civil unrest. 

Beginning with the Rose Revolution of 2003, Georgia saw drastic changes as sweeping reforms completely transformed the political landscape of the country and ousted Soviet-era elites from the government. Under the leadership of Mikheil Saakashvili and his party, the United National Movement (UNM), corruption was largely rooted out, economic reforms were swiftly implemented and Georgia’s institutions were strengthened. 

Emerging at the center of international attention, Georgia’s democratic success became a symbol of hope for the West in a region otherwise so firmly under the Kremlin’s sphere of influence, placing pressure on Baku and Yerevan to follow suit with democratic progress of their own. 

In conjunction with Saakashvili’s ambitious reforms, his decline in popularity, largely attributed to the 2008 invasion of Georgian territory by Russian forces, thrust Georgia into a period of great uncertainty. The Five-Day War, catalyzed by rising tensions in Moscow surrounding Georgia’s aspirations to join NATO, left hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced. In a 2019 report on human rights in Georgia, the U.S. State Department condemned “unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life” and killings by Russian and de facto authorities in occupied Abkhazia and South Ossetia, highlighting the continuous nature of Russia’s human rights abuses beyond its own borders. 

Four years later, with the backdrop of Russian forces on Georgian soil and Saakashvili’s popularity lingering at an all-time low, the UNM admitted defeat to Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream party in the 2012 parliamentary elections in a peaceful transition of power — perhaps Saakashvili’s parting gift to the country he left so deeply divided.

The deteriorating state of human rights in Georgia sets the stage for the Georgian Dream party’s recent abuses. Human Rights Watch reports that “political tensions and sustained protests over electoral reforms marked 2019 in Georgia,” citing excessive use of force by police among other human rights concerns including labor regulations, LGBTQ+ rights and harsh drug laws. During the summer 2019 protests, clashes between protesters and police officers ensued in the infamous Gavrilov’s night, led by European Georgia and UNM opposition leaders. In the following weeks, opposition forces launched a series of major protests in front of the Georgian parliament building, mobilizing thousands in their demand for electoral reform.

Though significantly less dire than neighboring countries in the region, Georgia’s human rights landscape facilitates the Georgian Dream party’s politically motivated arrests of UNM leaders in recent years—setting up the crucial question of political prisoners and whether or not Georgia is guilty of having them. 

United National Movement Cases

Since its rise to power in 2012, the Georgian Dream party has employed various tactics to maintain its position as the ruling party in Tbilisi, not least of which being abuse of power. The string of arrests and political persecutions of UNM opposition leaders in the years since 2012 reveals a concerning trend about the behavior of ruling regimes in Georgia’s recently democratic past, leading experts to speculate about the deteriorating state of the country’s political future. 

An examination of some of the individual cases among those detained by the current ruling party in recent years uncovers the pattern of suppressing political dissidents and opposition voices in Georgia.  

Gigi Ugulava   Giorgi “Gigi” Ugulava is a Georgian politician who rose to prominence in 2003 as one of the leaders of the Rose Revolution alongside Mikheil Saakashvili. A former journalist, Ugulava’s professional background includes experience working with international organizations like Transparency International, the World Bank and the Eurasia Foundation. During his time with the United National Movement, Ugulava was appointed, and later elected, mayor of Tbilisi, serving from 2005 until 2013 when the Georgian Dream party took power. 

Shortly thereafter, in 2013, several charges were brought against him by the Tbilisi City Court under the mandate of new ruling party officials, accusing Ugulava of abuse of power and embezzlement of state funds. In 2014, he was sentenced to several months of pretrial detention and in 2015, he was found guilty and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Despite his release from prison in 2017 on account of a reduced sentence, Ugulava was once again charged in 2018 on similar allegations of embezzlement and convicted by the Supreme Court after an unsuccessful appeals process by his lawyers, this time accusing the ex-Mayor of embezzling 48 million lari in state funds in a closed hearing. 

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Ugulava’s case was met with backlash from dissidents both in Georgia and abroad. Within Georgia, several opposition parties responded to the Georgian Dream’s actions by halting negotiations with the ruling party over electoral reforms, which were a priority in parliament at the time. Opposition leaders like Tamar Kordzaia of the Republican Party and Shalva Natelashvili of the Labour Party spoke out against Ugulava’s detainment, labeling the court’s ruling ‘diktat’ and calling for demonstrations in support of his release. In a joint statement released in February 2020, several non-governmental organizations outlined the civil rights concerns in Ugulava’s case and accused the Georgian government of ignoring “the country’s interests and recommendations of its Western partners.” According to Ugulava himself, his conviction by the Georgian Supreme Court was “politically motivated” and a “personal decision” of Bidzina Ivanishvili. 

Meanwhile, Western politicians like chair of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jim Risch and U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger turned to Twitter, expressing disappointment in Georgia’s “politically motivated abuse of opposition politicians” and “unacceptable behavior”, going as far as to assert that “using courts as a weapon is NOT democracy” with regards to Ugulava’s arrest. 

On May 15, 2020, faced with international and domestic pressures, Georgian President Zurabishvili pardoned Ugulava. Despite succumbing to pressures to release Ugulava, the president in her remarks reaffirmed the Georgian Dream party’s position that “there are no political prisoners in Georgia”, citing instead “national interests” as the reason for her pardon and placing blame on the opposition. After his release, Gigi Ugulava went on to found the European Georgia party with other former leaders of the UNM, and continues to be one of the most active opposition members in Georgian politics. 

Irakli Okruashvili   Another important UNM case in the Georgian Dream’s campaign against opposition forces in Georgia is that of Irakli Okruashvili, who joined the UNM in 2002 and served in a number of government positions under President Saakashvili, including as governor of Shida Kartli, Minister of Internal Affairs and Minister of Defense. 

Despite working alongside Saakashvili during the Rose Revolution, Okruashvili broke away from the UNM in 2007 to form his own opposition party. Okruashvili’s departure from the UNM was marked by personal allegations he made against Saakashvili, accusing him of corruption, human rights abuses, incompetency and the deaths of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania and businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili. In response to his Defense Minister’s opposition, then-President Saakashvili had Okruashvili arrested on broad charges of corruption including extortion, abuse of power and money laundering, a suppression of political dissidence not unlike the Georgian Dream’s own persecutions of UNM leaders in recent years. 

After his release following a guilty plea and retraction of accusations against Saakashvili (which some speculate the Victorious Georgia party leader made under pressure by the prosecution), Okruashvili spent his expulsion from Georgia in France, where he remained politically active in his criticisms of Saakashvili and eventually returned to Tbilisi upon the UNM’s defeat in 2012 parliamentary elections. 

Fasting forward to present-day, Okruashvili again found himself detained, but this time under a new ruling party—one whose appetite for abuse of power seems to follow precedence set by Saakashvili in his second term. Following the 2019 protests, Okruashvili was arrested, charged and convicted of participating in group violence. In response to Okruashvili’s arrest and subsequent sentencing of five years in prison, “leader of [the]European Georgia opposition party Giga Bokeria said that Irakli Okruashvili was and remains a political prisoner.” The U.S. embassy in Georgia also expressed concern over Okruashvili’s arrest, declaring that the ruling party’s actions amounted to “political interference” and the “selective use of justice.” 

On May 15, 2021, President Zurabishvili pardoned Okruashvili along with Gigi Ugulava, caving into domestic and international pressures to release the opposition leaders. Since then, Okruashvili has been an active member of the opposition in Georgia, heading Victorious Georgia. 

Nika Melia   Since the self-imposed exile of former president and leader of the UNM Mikheil Saakashvili, Nikanor “Nika” Melia, a member of the Georgian Parliament, has come to replace Saakashvili as the main opposition leader against the current Georgian Dream ruling party. 

Earlier this year on Feb. 23, 2021, Georgian police stormed the UNM’s headquarters to arrest Melia. In the chaos that ensued, his supporters clashed with the police, who in exchange met them with use of excessive force, tear gas and pepper spray in attempts to detain the opposition leader. Melia was arrested on charges of inciting violence during the June 2019 anti-government protests and refusing to pay the increased bail set for his case; however, the UNM party chairman denies these charges, denouncing them as part of a series of “ongoing repressions against the opposition. Moreover, in the week before Melia’s detention, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia had stepped down, seemingly disagreeing with his party on the grounds that Melia’s arrest would cause further “political escalation” and risk the health of Georgian citizens. 

The arrest of Nika Melia quickly came to attention on the international stage, as domestic and foreign demands for his release placed pressure on the Georgian government. Melia’s detainment drew swift condemnation from other opposition leaders and the U.K. and U.S. embassies in Georgia, the latter of which released a statement outlining concerns regarding “the arrest of opposition leader Nika Melia and other members of the opposition in Georgia” and emphasizing that “polarizing rhetoric, force and aggression are not the solution to Georgia’s political differences.” 

Furthermore, Amnesty International released a report on the arrest and clashes at UNM headquarters, including a statement by Deputy Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia Denis Krivosheev that “Georgian authorities’ flagrant disregard for the rule of law and authority and integrity of the judiciary… suggest the arrest is politically motivated.” Meanwhile, an international community of civil society organizations and human rights groups came together in support for the jailed opposition leader, advocating for the immediate release of Melia by Georgian authorities. 

Ultimately, in response to mounting international pressures and allegations of political motivation behind his detainment, a court ruling ordered Melia’s release on bail, which was posted by the EU on his behalf. 

Mikheil Saakashvili   The Georgian Dream party’s crackdown on political opposition in Georgia via detainment and prosecution of opposition leaders can be further examined by Georgia’s most prominent self-proclaimed political prisoner yet: former President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Upon his return to Tbilisi from a self-imposed exile ahead of Georgian municipal elections, Saakashvili was detained by authorities on Oct. 1, 2021. Having been convicted of abuse of power by a Georgian court back in 2018, Saakashvili had been warned that he would be imprisoned immediately if he “[set]foot on Georgian soil”. Despite the charges against him and a warrant for his arrest, Saakashvili went ahead with his decision to return to Georgia — and while all eyes were on Saakashvili, the Georgian Dream party’s victory in local elections was largely glossed over. 

In a letter penned from prison one week into his arrest, Saakashvili declared that he was on his seventh day of a hunger strike, one which ended up lasting fifty days before he was hospitalized with serious concerns about his health. His health quickly deteriorated, made worse by his initial refusal of treatment after being denied the right to confidential counsel with his lawyers. After visiting Saakashvili in prison on Oct. 27, Ukrainian human rights defender Ludmila Denisova reported that several articles of the European Convention of Human Rights were being violated in his case, and his doctors alleged torture and mistreatment by the authorities while Saakashvili was in custody. 

Though he remains one of the most controversial and polarizing figures in Georgia today, exemplified by widely-held sentiment that his status as a political prisoner is an attempt to re-enter Georgian politics, Saakashvili’s treatment and arrest raises serious concerns regarding suppression of opposition forces by the Georgian Dream ruling party. In conjunction with previous UNM cases, the developing situation around Saakashvili reveals a troubling trend for Georgia and its democratic trajectory. 

Addressing Political Motivations Behind UNM Cases

When looking at the string of arrests of opposition leaders by the ruling Georgian Dream party in recent years, the burning question remains: were the arrests politically motivated?

In the case of Gigi Ugulava, Irakli Okruashvili, Nika Melia, Mikheil Saakashvili and several others, the answer seems to be yes. Since their rise to power in 2012, the Georgian Dream party has continued the downward spiral towards authoritarianism and abuse of power which began under Saakashvili’s disastrous second term, utilizing politically motivated arrests and the judiciary to strengthen the ruling party’s hold on power. 

In an interview with Glimpse From the Globe, senior Atlantic Council fellow and Georgia expert Terrell Jermaine Starr confirms many of these concerns regarding Saakashvili’s imprisonment and former UNM cases. 

According to Starr, although the United National Movement did abuse power, “the problem [with Saakashvili’s arrest]is the process, not necessarily that he is guilty.” Even though many among other opposition parties would like to see Saakashvili jailed for the authoritarian tendencies he demonstrated in his second term, “the sentiment is that the process is not fair in persecuting him,” and his arrest was, indeed, politically motivated. 

Throughout much of Georgia, the UNM and its leaders, several of whom are profiled above, remain widely unpopular. Criticism surrounding Georgia’s loss in the armed conflict with Russia in 2008 and Saakashvili’s abuse of power in his second term were not easily forgiven by the Georgian public. The reputation of the UNM and the extremely polarizing nature of former president Saakashvili add another layer of complexity to this issue.

What seems to tie all the UNM cases together, however, is a clear and consistent political motivation for persecution by the ruling Georgian Dream party. In every case, a broad criminal charge such as abuse of power or corruption was exploited to imprison the opposition figures who were most vocal in their criticisms of the ruling party. 

The same pattern of suppression of political dissidents that began emerging under Saakashvili now seems to be unfolding under the Georgian Dream Party, becoming a concerning trend in a country that is often regarded as the bearer of democracy in the Caucasus. As Thomas de Waal highlights, for Georgia’s ruling party, “regime survival seems to trump all other considerations” — and this seems to hold true for both ruling parties which have been in power since the Rose Revolution. 

The suppression of political opposition in Georgia is especially concerning when evaluating the overall trends in the country. Ketevan Kukava, a representative from the Georgian Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), outlines some of these concerns in an email exchange with Glimpse From the Globe. 

Kukava emphasizes that “the genuine independence of the Georgian judiciary has not been achieved,” arguing instead that “fundamental deficiencies remaining in the legal framework” pose a threat to Georgia’s political direction. According to the IDFI, freedom from improper government influence in the judiciary remains a primary concern for Georgia. 

Starr corroborates the view that the lack of a fully independent judiciary is fueling political suppression in Georgia, because accusations of abuse of power against the ruling party would not be waged as easily if the Georgian people had faith in the justice system. “When you have a judiciary that is essentially hand-picked by the party leader, the financier, Bidzina [Ivanishvili], of course people are going to wage those accusations against you.”

Emerging patterns of politically motivated arrests, therefore, are facilitated by the lack of an independent judiciary — one of the major shortcomings of the 2003 revolution. Instead, the judicial branch becomes a tool, a resource to be exploited in the Georgian Dream’s pursuit to solidify and maintain their power in Parliament. Using the courts to their advantage, the ruling party in Georgia is able to silence opposition leaders through political convictions and sentences doled out by a judiciary that is under their power and manipulated to serve party, not public, interests. 

“Relative to the Rose Revolution, they’re backsliding,” Starr said. “While the Georgian Dream is the opposite of what the Rose Revolution was, it’s not Belarus or Azerbaijan yet, and it’s a long time before it gets to that point.” 

Starr also points to another dangerous trend in the country. That is, the trifecta of far-right groups, the Church and the government. Far-right groups with direct links to Putin pumping a constant stream of Russian disinformation and the Georgian Orthodox Church have always been factors of Georgia’s political landscape. 

“What you have not had is a government that manipulated these two,” Starr said. “That didn’t happen with the United National Movement, and that didn’t happen with Shevardnadze.” 

Dangerously manipulating the dynamics of Russian influence, the omnipresent Church and far-right groups, the Georgian Dream party’s institutionalization of political suppression campaigns strengthen the ruling party’s regime at the cost of undermining Georgia’s democratic development.

Solutions: A More Proactive Role for the West

Georgia now finds itself at a crossroads. The suppression of political opposition by an increasingly bold ruling party threatens to undermine the democratic progress which pushed Georgia to international prominence nearly two decades ago. For the West, the loss of Georgia’s democracy would mean the loss of a success story and an ally in a crucial part of the world which, until now, seemed to have successfully broken free of Russia’s wide-reaching sphere of influence. Standing to lose Georgia, therefore, would have grave consequences for the West. 

As the Georgian Dream party solidifies its power in Georgian politics, it also solidifies the influence of Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Georgian oligarch with deep economic ties to Russia who is widely believed to be calling the shots for the ruling party behind the scenes. If the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky holds a lesson, it is that economic dependence on Russia — particularly for oligarchs with billions at stake​​ — guarantees Putin’s sphere of influence reaches well beyond its political pursuits. 

Despite attempts to appear otherwise, the Georgian Dream is significantly more tolerant of Russian influence than Georgia ever was under Saakashvili, even though deeply-rooted distrust and antagonistic sentiment towards Russia has not changed among its people. According to Starr, because it makes its money in Russia, the Georgian Dream Party is “not as pro-Russia as people think they are, they just don’t care about the impression they give off [to the West].” Recognizing that economic dependence on Russia is now a factor for the ruling party under Ivanishvili, the Georgian Dream instead attempts to manipulate this relationship with Russia for their gain, including being tolerant of association with far-right groups who have direct ties to Putin in some instances, Starr highlights. 

This strategic adoption of strategy towards Russia should cite a major concern for the West, whose main investment in Georgia is its formerly aggressive anti-Russia, pro-West approach under Saakashvili which serves Western security interests and allowed its allies to keep Putin’s power in check. Upholding democratic progress in Georgia, therefore, must remain a priority for Western players. A commitment to human rights in the region must be affirmed by the United States and European allies, while being careful not to alienate the Georgian public with political stances that do not reflect the will of the people. 

Through pro-democracy efforts, human rights-oriented foreign policy and the promotion of Western values abroad, the United States and Europe have the power to help preserve the democratic progress Georgia’s people paved the way towards. Because Georgia’s future hangs in the balance, and how we choose to act today will shape its prospects for decades to come.