WORLD NEWS, 22 November - IP "TURKMENinform". The International Institute for Strategic Research «Vector» initiates and supports the development of strategies and innovative projects in overcoming crises in contentious regions of the world directed on strengthening the international safety and expanding different forms of cooperation.
The last decades testify that those methods which had been undertaken by the international community to resolve the regional and, first of all, interethnic problems were fruitless. It is obvious that the presence of the peacemaking contingents such as the UN, NATO and other organizations and countries doesn’t resolve the problems of contentiousness in the areas of their dislocation, but transforms them to the stage of “chronic disease”.
The way to solve the regional conflicts through, according to the accepted definition, the methods of democracy turned out to be untenable too. For example, the vast majority of Transdniestria citizens on the referendum voted for joining Russia, but still they are not allowed to exercise it. The results of the referendum on the Russian status of Sevastopol have been ignored. Almost all the population of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and other regions are failing to make their countries a part of Russian Federation. And it is not only on the territory of the former USSR where nearly the same processes occur.
The present practice of resolving the interregional conflicts shows its ineffectiveness that specifies the necessity of looking for the new innovative approaches that, in the authors’ opinion, should be stated first of all on the grounds of basic social relations in the economic sphere.
Considering the economies of contentious regions, it is necessary to note its extremely backward level. Statistical data that define the economic situation in Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and other problem regions show us that their development of market relations is rudimentary. Productive industries are mainly disorganized. The level of real unemployment involves about a half of the able-bodied population. Poverty and increasing social diseases make these regions unsafe to live in not only for local people. All these factors considerably determine the contentiousness of such regions which generally takes the form of interethnic or interstate confrontation. To overcome such the situation is the most important condition for eliminating or considerable lessening the contentiousness of regions in general.
