The trucks were being loaded with humanitarian aid for the frontlines, everything necessary was included, so they thought. Big boxes with food, medicine and more. But one woman looked skeptically at the process, she told feminist peace-building organisation Kvinna Till Kvinna, and asked if they couldn’t replace packs of cigarettes with sanitary pads.
This happened in Azerbaijan a few days into the ongoing war over Nagorno-Karabakh, though Anne Nemsitsveridze and Regina Jegorova-Askerova, who work for Kvinna Till Kvinna, report that similar situations have taken place in Armenia when we speak over Zoom. As they explain, it’s not only humanitarian aid that forgets about women’s needs and women’s perspectives, and this problem is obstructing finding a road towards peace again.
On 27 September, Azerbaijan started a military offensive to take control of the unrecognised region inhabited by ethnic Armenians, and which is de jure Azerbaijani territory. In the month since, the civilian and military losses have been heavy on both sides, and thousands of people have been displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh. Ceasefires appear to have had little impact on the actual fighting, and evidence of war crimes being committed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia is mounting.
