Hamida notes that while she has not directly faced the horrors of war, she has been forced to live with its consequences - and that is not a fate she wants to pass on to future generations.

“I don’t want my children to die in a war or have to face the horrors of war. I was born during the war. I didn’t see it but I have seen the consequences, what it did to people and what it did to society.

She says it was frightening to see the impact of the conflict on her country. “I was extremely scared of what was happening. I couldn’t understand why there was so much nationalism, why there was so much trauma. And now it’s very difficult for this [young] generation to understand the older generation, which has lost so much.”

She says it is really important to build a bridge between the two generations, so young people can “understand what happened to them and how we can move on.”

Hamida’s desire to help her country build peace pushed her to live abroad and learn about other conflicts and peacebuilding efforts.

She notes that her time as a volunteer at a Syrian refugee camp in Austria helped her understand that the implications of war are the same everywhere.

Hamida says her time at the camp was “a major transformational moment” in her life, and it helped her realize that conflicts were not unique to her nation or to the South Caucasus.

Today, she says, Azerbaijani society tends to view women as “soldier producers.”

That mindset makes it challenging to be a female peace activist, Hamida says. But she is pushing back.

“There is a popular stereotype that, since there is a Muslim majority, women in Azerbaijani society are not emancipated or don’t have their own opinion. There is some truth to that: obviously there are women who cannot raise their voice, who don’t have enough capacity or platforms to address their issues.

“Some women are leaders in our society, however, and I am one of them. It’s frankly a challenge to be a woman and to be a leader in this society - especially when it is such a sensitive issue.”

She notes that when she writes articles or publicly speaks about her views on the conflict, there are people who perceive her as a woman whose “place is in the kitchen” and who should not “speak about serious stuff.”

But Hamida is confident that this mentality is “becoming less and less popular.”

As her experience grows, she says she is beginning to realize there are benefits to being a female peace activist.

“I work a lot with border communities, with IDPs and refugees. And a lot of times, because these people need some psychological assistance, it is easier for them to talk to women about sensitive, emotional things, and their traumas. So in a sense I can see there is a benefit to being a woman.”

Maria

Maria Karapetyan, 30, lives in Yerevan, Armenia. She says the ghost of the conflict is impossible to ignore as it impacts everyone’s lives in the country.

Maria says seven years of peacebuilding has influenced her own understanding of the conflict with Azerbaijan.