CCNR Fellow presents The Aleppo Project in Beirut

Holbrooke Fellow Armenak Tokmajyan participated on behalf of CCNR's "Aleppo Project" team at a four-day conference at Haigazian University located in Beirut, Lebanon, the heart of the Middle East. The event covered a wide range of issues related to Syrian modern and contemporary history, art, literature, conflict and post-conflict reconstruction.

Armenak's presentation "Reconstructing Aleppo" focused on one of the main questions of the Project: "Why is it important to think about reconstruction in Aleppo in the midst of war?" To answer this question, he briefly reviewed some aspects of Beirut's post-war (1991 and onwards) reconstruction process. Afterwards, he made some recommendations for Aleppo based on lessons learned from Beirut, receiving direct feedback from native Aleppeans attending the conference in the process.

As part of its work, the Aleppo Project team will launch a website to contain high quality maps and satellite images, publish several research papers documenting lessons learned from the reconstruction of Sarajevo and Beirut, collect survey data regarding issues important to Aleppeans, and encourage young Syrians to write for the upcoming website's blog.