|
||||
|
||||
 |
|
||||||||||||||
|
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Department of State Names New Galina Starovoitova Fellow on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution The U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) has named Zaindi Choltaev from Moscow, Russia as the Galina Starovoitova Fellowship recipient for the academic year 2002-2003. The Washington, D.C.-based Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars will host the Starovoitova fellow. Choltaev will conduct nine months of research on alternative concepts for peaceful resolution of the Chechen conflict. Choltaev is a member of the Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe (PACE) - State Duma Joint Working Group for Chechen Settlement, and assists with the coordinating council of the Peace Mission in the Northern Caucasus. In 1992, he served as the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Chechen Republic, and from 1994-1995, was Chair of the Administration in the Provisional State Council of the Chechen Republic. In 1996, he resigned from the Chechen government, citing his disagreement with its domestic and foreign policies involving human rights violations, and refused to participate in the elections of that year. Choltaev later rejected an offer to join the Administration of the Chechen Republic created by the Russian government in 2000. The Galina Starovoitvoa Fellowship on Human rights and Conflict Resolution is awarded to prominent scholars and policy makers from the Russian Federation who seek to advance human rights and conflict resolution. Starovoitova, one of the Soviet Union's leading specialists on ethnicity, served in the Congress of the Peoples' Deputies from 1989-1991. She co-founded the Democratic Russia movement and was a candidate in Russia's 1996 presidential elections. She also served as a scholar at the Kennan Institute. On November 20, 1998, two unknown assassins murdered Starovoitova in St. Petersburg. The fellowship, awarded through a competition administered jointly by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Kennan Institute, is part of the Department of State's public diplomacy effort to foster mutual understanding between the U.S. and other countries through international educational and training programs. Under Department's auspices, more than 5,500 students, scholars, professionals and community leaders from Eurasia come to the U.S. annually to study and conduct research. For Immediate Release
| |||||||||||||
| |||
|
