“Literature for Trust Building”

Natia Gogolashvili

On July 7, in the conference hall of the National Library, Human Rights Center held a public discussion – “Literature for Trust Building”. Before the discussion, there was a presentation of collected stories by Georgian, Ossetian and Abkhazian writers. Also there was a screening of the movie about Pen Marathon in Istanbul. 

According to the executive director of Human Rights Center Aleko Tskitishvili, literature can change relation between peoples: “literature and art are very important resources especially when there are two frozen conflicts in Georgia. There is no trust between Georgian - Ossetian and Georgian -Abkhazian peoples. These conflicts increased hatred between peoples and literature can change many things.”

“First Step”- this is the name of the collected stories that unites stories of Georgian, Ossetian and Abkhazian bloggers. There are 8 stories in the collection. The book was published with the initiative of UN Women. The writers shared their stories about war to each other at the work-shop held by the UN Women in Istanbul. Georgian, Ossetian and Abkhazian writers imagined the stories of the colleagues as their own and narrated in the first person.

“One of the main mandates and scope of UN Women is women’s role in the issues of peace and safety. One of the significant parts of this direction is activities regarding trust building. 

Accordingly, under the auspices of our projects, we had multiple meetings with our Ossetian and Abkhazian colleagues. Last year, came out an idea to conduct a pen marathon where Georgian, Ossetian and Abkhazian writers would meet each other, share their opinions and write joint stories”,- said the representative of UN Women Khatuna Kuntchulia. 

A writer Dato Turashvili was one of the participants of the pen marathon. In his opinion, first of all we have to return people and literature and art are of high importance in it. 

“I personally participated, it was a very good idea and it was well done. We met Abkhazian and Ossetian writers and, most importantly, this meeting had a specific result. Several joint prosaic collections have been published. The last collection was special, because we wrote each other’s stories. I wrote an Abkhazian story. Thanks to this experiment, we had an opportunity to see each other’s problems from different angle. I think that literature and art very important for returning people back. If we return the people back, then we can return back everything,”- said Dato Turashvili.

“Literary works are the ones that present the mood, evaluation of a war. Today we are witnessing the presentation of amazing collected stories, where works of Georgian, Ossetian and Abkhazian writers are printed together. They tell us about their vision, war, conflicting situations and current life,”- said a writer Guram Odisharia. 

The discussion was conducted under the project of Norway Helsinki Committee “Coalition for Trust”, which is implemented in South Caucasus together with local partners. Human Rights Center is partner to the project in Georgia. The project was financially supported by European Commission and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.