Participants at 12th Schlaining meeting in Austria in December 2003.
Manana Gurgulia, director of the Sukhum Media Club.
From left to right: Stanislav Lakoba, secretary of the Abkhaz National Security Council; Zurab Erkvania, chairman of the Georgian committee for missing soldiers; Ruslan Kishmaria, head of the Assembly, Gali region, Abkhazia; Irakli Alasania, special representative of the president of Georgia.
On the left, Irakli Alasania, special representative of the president of Georgia; on the right, Garri Samanba, MP, chairman of the committee on Defence and National Security at the Abkhaz National Assembly.
On the left, Anatoly Otyrba, Abkhaz political analyst; on the right, Irakli Gegechkoria, deputy special representative of the president of Georgia.
Schlaining dialogue meetings
From 2000-2007 Conciliation Resources organized and facilitated regular workshops for small groups of Georgian and Abkhaz officials, politicians and civil society activists.
Known as the Schlaining Process (after the Austrian town where the first meeting was held in 2000) the dialogue workshops offered participants from opposing sides of the conflict the rare opportunity to meet informally to analyse perceptions of the conflict and exchange information about the peace process. The format of the meetings was informal and confidential and participants took part in a personal capacity. More than 100 people including presidential representatives, government ministers, members of parliament, representatives of non-governmental organizations and the media took part in 20 workshops.
After 2005 the Schlaining Process was run and facilitated by Conciliation Resources. Prior to that, it was a joint project with the Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management (Germany). Read the Berghof report on the first thirteen workshops in the Schlaining Process.
The Schlaining Process came to an end in 2007, reflecting an increasingly difficult political context and a hardening of positions at the official level. Many of the relationships which were formed at the workshops, and the ideas generated and tested by participants, endure to this day.
Statements and press releases from the Schlaining Process
All statements and press releases are in PDF format.
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