“If there is no school, there will be no village,” a staff member explained last year, as children in front line villages like Karmir Shuka returned to class after a ceasefire. (Frederick Gillingham/TNH)
‘With our hearts beating fast’: Back to school on the Nagorno-Karabakh front line
By Frederick Gillingham, The New Humanitarian, August 5th, 2021
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/video/2021/8/5/back-to-school-on-the-nagorno-karabakh-front-line
Editor’s note:
Nine months after a ceasefire agreement ended 44 days of hostilities that killed more than 7,000 people – mostly young conscripts – tensions in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh are mounting.
Armenian and Azerbaijani civilians fear another flare-up, despite the presence of Russian peacekeepers.
As families around the world gear up for the return to classes, Frederick Gillingham’s short film looks at what children and teachers confronted when they returned to two frontline schools earlier this year.
Now, almost nine months on from the ceasefire, the Russian peacekeepers are restricted to patrolling roads and main towns, with very little presence at the newly drawn front lines; humanitarian access – even civilian missions – is still restricted; and access to water and electricity remains limited.
Recent clashes have underlined the fragility of the November 2020 Russian-brokered peace settlement, which ended last year’s flare-up in the decades-long war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
In February 2021, when access to the disputed Caucasus region was still heavily restricted for foreign journalists, filmmaker Frederick Gillingham was able to travel there to document post-conflict life, exploring why opening the schools meant everything to villages near the front line — and the fears staff and students had to overcome to do that.
As children prepare to return to their frontline schools later this month, the political rhetoric has again been hardening on both sides.
Yet the schools plan to open, as they did earlier this year.
As one teacher put it in February:
“We come to teach children with our hearts beating fast.”
Nagorno-Karabakh
AAM’s Blue Flame of Truth
Forgiving (within) all judgement of self
helps create peace (without) in the
inter-connectedness of All.