Saturday, 11 December 2010
Yesterday we marked the 19th anniversary of one of most important events of our newest history – the Artsakh independence referendum. In this respect, the present forum makes us reflect upon the idea of freedom.
The modern world is growing ever more intolerant of those empires based on violence and suppression of freedom: their existence is no longer tolerated, and we can state with confidence that the time has come for freedom.
Freedom is not a fair word to our people. Not only have we seen various empires oppress freedom over many centuries, but we also had the bitter cooperation of it throughout history.
We realized that we cannot develop unless we enjoy both internal and external freedom: even the freedom of thinking about freedom or meditating in general. It is an axiomatic truth that thinking always leads to heterodoxy or otherwise to freedom.
We have gathered to welcome the emergence of the community of people who claim a new thinking. We can state today the birth of a rising generation of lawyers - experts in international law in Armenia who seem to be ready to study two extremely important to the Armenian people issues, namely the legal aspect of the Artsakh conflict and the problem of international legal responsibility for the Genocide of Armenians.
Here, I would like to touch upon a characteristic feature of the modern world.
Nowadays more than ever, intellectuals and their associations have a real opportunity to influence decision-making processes. These community hubs are the very ones to carry out the States’ analytical and research functions in the modern world: they trace back the developments, detect and expose the mechanisms and factors of stability and public order, outline the trends ahead.
I wish this center could grow into a similar structure promoting the conduct of effective foreign policies. These structures act as a bridge between reality, on the one hand, and our wishes and goals, on the other.
People in Artsakh have a clear idea of what they want, and all of us are deeply convinced that we will get it. The mission of this center is to suggest us what kind of knowledge and tools are to be used on the way to achieving our goals as shortly as possible and in the most effective manner.
Today's event is dedicated to the legality of Kosovo's independence declaration - a theme of top interest to our scholars. Especially as lawyers may agree that currently Artsakh has far more solid legal, political-military and historical grounds for full self-determination,
I hope that the forum will give answers to all these questions.
In conclusion, I wish to note that the forum has to deal with the legal foundations of the problem as today’s international relations imply that law is most reasonable way of achieving freedom for peoples.
I wish fruitful work to the forum and successful activities to the newly established center.
