Faking Peace Until War in Nagorno-Karabakh: Realistic Opportunities for Peace Beyond the Centers of State Power

Abstract A number of international peace initiatives intended to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between 1994 until 2020, yet failed to do so – until all remaining Armenian people were eventually displaced in 2023. In light of these tragic consequences, this paper argues that the conflict exemplifies the urgent need to abandon traditional state-centric and power-focused approaches to peace which have produced numerous deadlocks. They emphasize the need to explore additional domains of peace to allow for peace processes with the potential to settle the conflict. This paper highlights the limitations of state-centric and power-focused initiatives. It suggests that peace in Nagorno-Karabakh requires widening participation beyond state institutions to include three constitutive domains of peace: civil society, women, and water. These domains are not to be engaged as contextual variables or instruments that can be utilized for a certain predefined purpose, but as co-producers of peace.