Farid Shafiyev: Urbicide acts as political project in civil, ethno-national conflicts

Urbicide in Karabakh clearly demonstrates that, in civil and ethno-national conflicts, the destruction of settlements acts as a spatial and political project.

Report informs that Farid Shafiyev, Chairman of the Board of the Center of Analysis of International Relations, said this at a session held as part of WUF13 in Baku.

According to him, the deliberate destruction of settlements becomes a tool for erasing multicultural identity, changing demographic reality and destroying symbolic infrastructure.

"Violence is deliberately applied to space. Homes, cultural institutions, administrative centers and symbolic sites are destroyed in order to eliminate collective life and establish new forms of administrative and political control. Urbicide is not accidental 'collateral damage,' but a strategy of governance," Shafiyev said.

He noted that cities and villages in the liberated territories have to be rebuilt almost from scratch.