Stories Entrusted
by Zam Abassanova
Journalism
Throughout my peacebuilding career, I really missed having an open platform to reach out to a wider audience and spread the word of peace to people who were plugged into the mainstream hate spree in Azerbaijan. No national media wanted to talk about peace whilst ethnic hatred was so crucial in making the existing government look all more needed. No branches of international media existing in Azerbaijan wanted to deal with the government either, therefore, they just let the peace hang.
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My desire to speak up in international media on peace grew even stronger when the repressions of the Azerbaijani government became intolerable. Journalism became the one tool that brought me an audience of people from all over the world curious about what was going on in Azerbaijan.
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Now that I know the power of journalism, I do not have any intention of stopping.
Neutral Zone Radio
in 2016 Zam co-founded the region's first Peace Radio in South Caucasus called Neutral Zone Radio along with two other journalists from Armenia and Georgia.
Streamed on Airtime created by Sourcefabric, NZR brought live dialogues to the listeners of these conflicting countries.
Tbilisi, Georgia 2016
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Other founders:
Irine Surmanidze (Georgia)
Veronika Aghajanyan (Armenia)
Azopchu-Digital Literacy Platform for Azerbaijani Girls
Founded in 2018, Azopchu is a platform for creating digital literacy programs for girls (age range 8-18) from Azerbaijan. We have created two programs within the platform: Audio Book Project that taught girls how to use a mobile phone and simple voice recording software to create audiobooks. Stop Motion Project taught girls how to create stop motion cartoons by using a mobile device.
Other founders: Lala Aliyeva (Azerbaijan)
Hello Leiden TV Show
In 2021, together with a team of refugee journalists, Zam co-founded a TV Program to give space to foreign stories in the local Dutch media. This was the first English-speaking show in Leiden media engaging refugee and local journalists.
Leiden, The Netherlands 2021
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Other founders:
Ole Chavannes (Netherlands)
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Paces & Faces Visual Storytelling
Paces &Faces is a visual storytelling project that captures the life stories of 100 Azerbaijani women. Stories entrusted to me then are translated into visual elaborate art pieces reflecting the stories of these women.
This project is currently in the early development stages.
Ethics Code for Conflict Reporters
In 2015, Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation brought Journalists covering Armenian and Azerbaijani conflicts together. Co-moderated by Zam, the group created a Code of Ethics for journalists reporting the Nagorno- Karabakh-conflict-related news.
Tbilisi, Georgia 2015
Other moderators:
Philip Gamaghelyan
Maria Karapetyan
Veronika Aghajanyan
Hidden Cholera: Mental Health Among Refugees
Refugee mental healthcare is among the most ignored subjects when it comes to refugee aid work. In most governments, this service is entirely unavailable to refugees due to a lack of mental healthcare providers speaking the language of refugees, long waiting times as well as budgetary matters. In this project, we will cover the stories of refugees as well as healthcare providers to understand the current situation in the city of Amsterdam.