Building On The Principal Support Framework District Self: Fill & Download for Free

Significantly mixed.The overall impacts of charter schools are in some ways quite positive, and in some ways extremely negative.Separating Good Schools from Bad SchoolsIt’s important to first note that a charter school is not the same as a private school. Charter schools are public schools; they cannot charge tuition, are subject to church-state issues that parochial or private schools are not, cannot require entrance exams, and must participate in required state testing where private schools do not.However, there is incredible variability to how charter schools are organized, run, held accountable, funded, accept students, create and use curriculum, and more.I have a friend who works for Etude High School, a public charter school in Wisconsin. It’s a great learning environment that very much differs from the rigid sit-and-learn methods of traditional schools. It’s a project-based learning, discovery-focused model that allows a lot of work-at-your-own-pace education and challenges students to apply cross-disciplinary skills in every aspect of their education. It’s doing some incredibly innovative education, and it’s been quite successful. My friend has been there for six years and loves it. His students have gone on to be quite successful.Other charter schools fail spectacularly. A recent study found that many online-based charter schools fail to graduate even half of their students. Numerous charter schools have closed mid-year and without warning, leaving students, parents, and even teachers stranded in the middle of a school year with limited options.What divides the two?Largely accountability, organization, and effective resourcing.Some charter schools are “schools within a school,” or otherwise organized under the main public district, and overseen by the district’s publicly elected school board.These can vary from entirely separate “alternative schools” that follow specialized or experimental educational structures, such as Etude, to specific, isolated programs that operate in the same buildings as the regular schools.For example, a nearby city to where I grew up operates an alternative school for students who might otherwise drop out due to teen pregnancy, disciplinary issues, work schedules, and more. The dedicated building is open longer hours (7am to 7pm,) with teachers that operate more on shifts than a traditional school. The school has built-in child care for single teen parents. It is focused on a traditional high school diploma and not just a GED. It doesn’t generally offer extracurricular activities, though students can enroll in those with the main school. (Most don’t.)In contrast, a friend of mine from college who taught English for a number of years was tapped to run an isolated, dedicated program within her school that she created from the ground up for at-risk students who just couldn’t operate in a traditional educational framework. She was essentially her own principal, though she officially reported to the principal of the high school on the organization chart. (She’s been incredibly successful and recently was a presenter at a multi-state regional conference on educational innovation.) This program co-ordinates with traditional classes, replacing most entirely, but still operates within the same school.Both of these charter schools are funded by need. They receive state aid per pupil like public schools, but they also receive grants for specific programs and specific activities. Etude works with a number of local manufacturers who sponsor various projects, extracurricular activities, and courses that work in conjunction with their businesses where students learn to apply their school work to real-world applications.Both of these are accountable to the local public school board. Their books are public record and overseen by the district administration.Other charter schools are privately owned, for-profit organizations, and operate on a contract with local districts. These receive public funding, but are not directly overseen by the public school board. These schools receive grants, local, state, and federal, ranging from the standard state aid per pupil to specific grants for technology, curriculum, or personnel, to undedicated blocks of straight cash to be used as the school sees fit.Some of these are successful. There are numerous privately-run for-profit Montessori schools that operate on contracts with districts to ensure that program graduates can easily transfer right into the public school’s curriculum, and many of these are very successful.Others are essentially nothing more than get-rich-quick schemes or other criminal enterprises by organizers, just as they are in higher education. The fact that they operate on contracts with sometimes little or even no oversight from the public also opens them up to incredible waste, fraud, and abuse. Over a six-year period spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations, the Federal government alone investigated 53 charter schools that resulted in 21 indictments and 17 convictions.Steven Cox, a former insurance executive and the founder of the now-defunct California Charter Academy, at one point the largest chain of charter schools in the country, was indicted on 56 counts of misappropriation and theft for trips to Disneyland and stealing $42,000 from the school to pay his personal income taxes. Eleven years later, Cox’s case still has not been resolved as he continues to use his fortune to litigate it. Horizon Academy in Cincinnati essentially operated as a front for an immigration fraud ring for several years as the founder used it to get work visas for Turkish nationals with absolutely no background in education. The CEO of Philadelphia Academy Charter School admitted to stealing approximately a half a million dollars from the school in part through raiding its vending machines.These schools operate on loose contracts with little to no accountability to the public other than being required to publish graduation rates and test scores. They can often operate for years bilking the public before closing, sometimes abruptly, and absconding with the funds.Positive Charter School Models and OpportunitiesWhere schools are effectively resourced based on demonstrated need, and are publicly accountable just as the traditional public school, charter schools may be quite effective. They can be testbeds for new educational practices and reforms, or offer alternatives for students who need different educational models from their peers.Charter schools might be a great way to differentiate education or provide specialized educational applications, such as in-depth vocational education. Imagine if a student graduated high school ready or significantly far along the track to becoming a journeyman carpenter or a licensed electrician. While requiring specialization through tracked education may not be practical or even desirable (look at me, I was going to be an astrophysicist when I started undergraduate,) offering the opportunities might be quite beneficial.Offering this kind of differentiated education is already a goal of most public schools. However, a charter school with a specific mission, as opposed to the more general liberal arts education of a traditional K-12 school, could provide a more focused differentiated education that goes in-depth on a particular area, rather than more broadly on several disciplines.There are positives and negatives to this. A more well-rounded education has proven itself over time to benefit a person over their whole life. I had a poster up on my wall when I taught that had a picture of scientists running away from dinosaurs that read, “Science will teach you how to clone a T-Rex. Humanities will teach you why it’s a bad idea.”Now, a charter school could have a liberal arts education that is still focused on a certain topic. A charter school focused on churning out STEM educated graduates, for example, may have just as much focus on literature and art and music, but from an engineering perspective. The band students might take more time to learn acoustical physics or metallurgy for better instruments. The literature may focus slightly more heavily on technical documents and scientific literacy, but also include fiction geared towards engineering types. The math might be more practical-application-based.The Perception of Failing Public Schools and The Rise of ConsumerismJon Stewart hosted educational reformer Diane Ravitch several times on his show. Ravitch noted on multiple occasions that the majority of U.S. adults have bought into the narrative that public schools are failing. International benchmark test scores continue to fall for U.S. students, for example. Advocacy documentaries such as Waiting for Superman paint the public schools as a broken system where teachers’ unions continue to drive a status-quo at the expense of children, and charter schools as the revolution in education that would shake up the industry with competition and reform that public schools lack, but limited by lottery systems leaving the unlucky trapped.Yet, Ravitch also noted that on the whole, most U.S. voters surveyed also believe that their local public school is good and successful.Jon Stewart: These areas, so the families in these areas, because this gets into another issue you bring up in the book [Reign of Error]. The families in this area are rightly concerned with the performance of some of the public schools in their area. These schools can be dilapidated, they can be poorly performing and these types of things. There is this movement and the charter movement that says ‘what’s wrong with giving choice to those kids in those areas?’ because the schools around them are not are not serving their needs. What is wrong with that in your mind?Diane Ravitch: Well, what’s wrong with it is that there, it is part of, I believe, a purposeful effort to create a consumer mentality around education. Public education is the public responsibility. Whether you send your children to private schools, or to a religious school, or you home school them, that’s your right. And if you have no children at all, you’re still obligated to support public education. What they’re trying to do is to say that public education is not public, it’s a choice, it’s a consumer choice. They’re trying to destroy the sense of civic obligation so the next time there’s a…JS: So, turn it into a marketplace?DR: Yes, a marketplace, exactly. So, the next time a bond issue is up, you will say ‘well, I don’t have a child in school. I’m not going to vote for the bond issue.’ We’re going to destroy public education that way. . . . I think it’s all wrong. I think that the idea of you look on your school, you go shopping and you pick your school the way you pick your shoes or your automobile, that is wrong too. People should have a good neighborhood school in every neighborhood. One where they are very happy to send their kids because they know the teachers are terrific. The funny thing is if you look at poll data from Gallup, what it shows is if people are asked how is American education doing, they’ve heard thirty years of American education is broken, it doesn’t work, it’s obsolete, so they say ‘oh, American public education, no good.’ How is your school, how is your neighborhood school? ‘Oh, my neighborhood school is terrific. My teachers are great. I love my teachers.’JS: But it is like Congress, you could look at that, too, the same way. Oh, my Congressman is okay, but the institution – it does have issues… [laughter].The increasing narrative of “school choice” around charter schools continues to create a false premise of the consumer mentality towards education; we pay for the educational system, and so we ought to get what we pay for. And if we don’t like the results, we ought to buy something else.Yet, public schools are not allowed in many cases to compete on the same level playing field as private schools or even charter schools.Public schools are reliant on taxes, and obviously, few people really like paying more in taxes. They see their property tax levies as directly funding the schools. They often don’t think about those taxes also funding police, fire, and EMS services. So, when the municipality suggests raising taxes again, adding another bonding bill to the budget, passing another referendum, it gets voted down, often by those who no longer have children in the district.This happens because we’ve bought into this business-consumerism model of education rather than funding it as a public trust for everyone. It used to be that we all understood it was a public trust; even if you didn’t have kids in the school, it was important to fund it for everyone because it makes the public better off.As John Green notes:Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.Consumerism takes the approach that whatever is good for the individual is good for society. This is the absolute worst approach to something like education, and really even good governance or society.Civic Responsibility and Pride, and How That Impacts Government - Including Public EducationEducation is one of the great equalizers of humanity, and it was for that precise reason that the United States was one of the earliest innovators in providing a free, public education to every citizen, even mandating compulsory attendance. We were one of the first countries to achieve a >90% literacy rate.We did so because of the idea of civic responsibility for one another: that if we all contribute to the public good, we all receive back something greater than we put in.Education lifts millions out of poverty by creating a skilled workforce. That skilled workforce put a car in every driveway, a computer in everyone’s pocket, and a man on the Moon. The space program alone yielded innovations that dominate our daily lives ranging from memory foam to LASIK to infrared ear thermometers. It would not have been possible without a broad, skilled workforce, the product of public education.Whether it’s vocational education, professional education, or even general education, public education creates opportunities for every single person in the country to contribute to society. It was that kind of public access to education that turned the United States from a backwater rural agrarian society to the largest, most prosperous industrialized superpower in the world.And we took pride in that. We created state university systems that we wanted to become the envy of the world, publicly available to every citizen. We would produce the finest scientists and inventors and the world’s greatest artists. We would take pride in fostering the world’s greatest economy and the world’s greatest culture.We did that by investing in our people. Collectively. Public institutions would be cathedrals of civic pride. Public buildings such as schools and courthouses were marble and granite, built to last. They were also the centers of civic activity. The school was often the heart of the town, where meetings and debates and festivals and elections were held. The courthouse would be where critical matters of government would be decided and administered. These were buildings of respect, and everyone took pride in that. We built that.We don’t teach that kind of civic mentality anymore, not in our homes and not in our schools. Hell, we can’t even teach that in our schools anymore, because teachers would get fired for politicizing in the classroom.The school is not the center of civic life, because honestly, we no longer have a civic life.Consumerism has replaced that sense of civic responsibility to each other to make the nation better overall. Ayn Rand’s idea of selfishness as a virtue has become the guidestar of the nation: screw you, so long as I got mine.We no longer care about investing in society, trusting that we would reap the benefits. Instead, we only care about consuming from society; if we are not personally benefiting, then it must not be valuable.This is why, I firmly believe, it is so easy for certain people to believe in the idea of a “moocher class” of “welfare queens” who just exist to live fat off the public trough: it’s what they would do if they were allowed to. Why? Because they live from a mentality of consumerism, and not civic engagement.If we start from the premise that public schools are a public trust which we are all responsible for, the whole conversation changes. No longer is it about requiring education to fix itself by forcing it to compete over increasingly limited resources. Instead, it’s a matter of coming together as a culture to improve education. Every stakeholder has some degree of obligation, then.Some of it might be more funding. Maybe people without kids decide to invest their time in coaching. Maybe businesses do more joint ventures with the schools.Most of it is just shifting from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control.And that’s eminently evident in the overall impact of charter schools. The impact of charter schools is that they continue to further the mentality that other people are responsible for making a product that we want to buy and we’ll just keep demanding alternatives until we get what we want, rather than civic ownership of that product and collective work to improve it. If others are responsible for the quality control, then we as a society don’t have to have any responsibility for the outcomes.But if we are responsible for improving that product, that has a whole host of rather difficult implications for us. That’s going to require work.Look. If you want a better country, you have to be better citizens.That starts with understanding that in a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, the people are what make the difference. All of the people. Everyone is responsible for the public good. Everyone has to contribute and work at it.Charter schools are a cheap cop-out to avoid that responsibility. They continue to further an external locus of control that takes away the need for self-agency to work to improve the situation. Someone else can clean it up.Oh, we’ll pay for it. Grudgingly.So long as we don’t actually have to do anything.In BriefCharter schools do provide some valuable alternatives to traditional models of education, and testbeds for educational research. They can be excellent ways to differentiate student learning and provide unique opportunities for some students.They can also be incredibly detrimental to student outcomes and perpetuate a flagging sense of civic responsibility and a consumerist society that abdicates personal responsibility and self-agency for “more choices” and personal satisfaction.It’s difficult to say which of these impacts has the greater weight. Every situation in every place charter schools are implemented is different.Caveat emptor.Your mileage may vary.This is long and I didn’t add any pictures. Here. Have a baby raccoon.Mostly Standard Addendum and Disclaimer: read this before you comment.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, et cetera and BNBR violation and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.Getting cute with me about my commenting rules and how my answer doesn’t follow my rules and blah, blah, whine, blah is getting old. Stay on topic or you’ll get to watch the debate from the outside.If you want to argue and you’re not sure how to not be a dick about it, just post a picture of a cute baby animal instead, all right? Your displeasure and disagreement will be duly noted. Pinkie swear.If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.Debate responsibly.Thanks for the A2A, Habib.

Concept of Integrated Battle Group (IBG)The concept has been derived from Russian Operational Manoeuvre Groups (OMG), US Army Brigade Combat Team (BCT) and EU Battle Group (BG).Russian Operational Manoeuvre Groups (OMGs)[1]The basis of the OMG was an armored unit heavily reinforced with self-propelled artillery, motorized rifle units, engineers, and logistics. An army OMG was built around a tank division or tank corps. A front OMG was built around a tank army with a mission of 150 kilometers or more depth.The regiment-division-army front model was replaced by the brigade-army-military district model. The maneuver brigade contains four maneuver battalions, four artillery battalions, two air defense battalions, an engineer battalion, a logistics battalion, and an electronic warfare company. It is more lethal than the regiment but not as lethal as the division. The advantage is that the brigade is much easier to move and deploy than a division, and it is designed for maneuver combat.US Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs)[2]BCTs are the basic building blocks for employment of Army combat forces. They are usually employed within a larger framework of U.S. land operations but are equipped and organized so that they can conduct independent operations as circumstances demand.A BCT averages 4,500 soldiers depending on its variant: Stryker, Armored, or Infantry.A Stryker BCT is a mechanized infantry force organized around the Stryker combat vehicle.Armored BCTs are the Army’s primary armored units and principally employ the M1 Abrams main battle tank and the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle.An Infantry BCT is a highly maneuverable motorized unit.Variants of the Infantry BCT are the Airmobile BCT (optimized for helicopter assault) and the Airborne BCT (optimized for parachute forcible entry operations).EU Battle Groups (BGs)[3]The Battlegroup (BG) is a specific form of the EU’s rapid response elements and is one possible answer to the timely provision of the necessary capabilities for an EU rapid response operation.the minimum militarily effective, credible, rapidly deployable, coherent force packagecapable of stand-alone operations, or for the initial phase of larger operations;based on a combined arms, battalion sized force and reinforced with Combat Support and Combat Service Support elements;must be associated with a (F)HQ and pre-identified operational and strategic enablers, such as strategic lift and logistics.Designed for a range of possible missionsGeneric composition of a BG = +/- 1500 troopsAll deployment assets & capabilities will be associated with itSustainability: 30 days initially, extendable to 120, if re-supplied appropriatelyIBGsJoint Doctrine for Indian Armed Forces 2017 notes the necessity of fighting “integrated theatre battles”. It is based on Cold Start Doctrine which seeks to leverage India’s modest superiority in conventional forces to respond to Pakistan’s continued provocation. This doctrine requires reorganizing the Indian Army’s offensive power away from the three large strike corps into eight smaller division-sized “integrated battle groups” (IBGs) that combine mechanized infantry, artillery, and armor in a manner reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s operational maneuver groups.Purpose of Indian IBGs“The eight battle groups would be prepared to launch multiple strikes into Pakistan along different axes of advance. It is envisioned that the operations of the IBGs would be integrated with close air support from the Indian Air Force and naval aviation assets to provide highly mobile fire support. As one retired Indian general described, India is seeking to “mass firepower rather than forces.”Although the operational details of Cold Start remain classified, it appears that the goal would be to have eight IBGs entering Pakistani territory within seventy-two to ninety-six hours from the time the order to mobilize is issued.The IBGs should be launching their break-in operations and crossing the ‘start line’ even as the holding (defensive) divisions are completing their deployment on the forward obstacles. Only such simultaneity of operations will unhinge the enemy, break his cohesion, and paralyze him into making mistakes from which he will not be able to recover.By moving forces into unpredicted locations at high speeds and making decisions faster than their opponents can, the IBGs would seek to defeat Pakistani forces in the field by disrupting their cohesion. Indian planners believe that when faced with offensive thrusts in as many as eight different sectors, the Pakistani military would be hard-pressed to determine where to concentrate its forces and which lines of advance to oppose.Having eight (rather than three) units capable of offensive action significantly increases the challenge for Pakistani intelligence’s limited reconnaissance assets to monitor the status of all the IBGs, improving the chance of achieving surprise. If Pakistan were to use nuclear weapons against Indian forces, divisions would present a significantly smaller target than would corps”[4]Footnotes[1] https://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/magazine/issues/2017/APR-JUN/pdf/8)Grau-RussianDOM.pdf[2] U.S. Army[3] The Battlegroup[4] https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/IS3203_pp158-190.pdf

First of all, not Artsakh but Nagorno Karabakh. There is NO international paper in which this place regarded as Artsakh. (Düshmenin quyusuna su tokmesek daha yaxshi olar).One of Azerbaijan`s ancient settlement and culture centers, Nagorno-Karabakh is a part of Karabakh region. In 1923, the Soviet government established the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO), covering a total area of 4,400 км², in the mountainous part of Karabakh. This laid the foundation of separatist trends in that region. But in fact the root cause of the problem goes back to the 19th century when the Armenians, who were resettled in Azerbaijan, laid claims to Azerbaijani lands.The Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict started with the Armenians` open territorial claims to Azerbaijan`s historical lands and ethnic provocations in 1988. In the early 1980s, the Armenians in the Soviet Union leadership, leaders of Armenian SSR and the Armenian diaspora abroad exploited the weakening of the central government of the USSR to embark on a campaign to annex the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast to Armenia.From 1987 to 1989, more than 250,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled from their historical lands in Armenia, with 216 of them brutally murdered, and 1,154 wounded.At the February 20, 1988 session of the NKAO Soviet of People’s Deputies, members of the region`s Armenian community adopted a resolution to appeal to the Supreme Soviets of Azerbaijan SSR and Armenian SSR to annex NKAO to Armenian SSR.On February 22, 1988, the Armenians opened fire on a peaceful demonstration staged by the Azerbaijanis near the town of Asgaran to protest against the decision of the Soviet of People’s Deputies of NKAO. Two Azerbaijani young people were killed in this incident to become first victims of the conflict.On December 1, 1989, the Supreme Soviet of Armenian SSR adopted an unprecedented resolution “On the unification of Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh”.On January 10, 1990, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet adopted a resolution “On the nonconformity with the USSR Constitution of the acts on Nagorno-Karabakh adopted by Armenian SSR Supreme Soviet on December 1, 1989 and January 9, 1990”. The resolution described as illegal Armenian SSR`s act on the unification of Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh without Azerbaijan SSR`s consent.On august 30, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan declared restoration of state independence. On October 18, the Constitutional Act “On the State Independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan” was adopted.On November 26, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Azerbaijan adopted the Law ‘On the abolition of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of the Republic of Azerbaijan”.In the late 1991-early 1992, the conflict entered its military stage. Having exploited the collapse of the Soviet Union and political instability in Azerbaijan caused by the internal standoff, Armenia began military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh with external military support.In February of 1992, an unprecedented massacre of the Azerbaijani population of the town of Khojaly was committed. Known as Khojaly Genocide, this tragedy resulted in thousands of Azerbaijanis being massacred or captured and the town razed to the ground.In May 1992, the town of Shusha and Lachin district, located between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, were occupied. In 1993, the Armenian armed forces captured six more Azerbaijani districts around Nagorno-Karabakh – Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan.On April 30, 1993, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 822, demanding immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from the Kalbajar district and other occupied areas of Azerbaijan.On July 29, 1993, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 853, demanding immediate complete and unconditional withdrawal of the occupying forces from the district of Aghdam and all other occupied areas of the Republic of Azerbaijan.On October 14, 1993, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 874, calling for the immediate implementation of the reciprocal and urgent steps provided for in the CSCE Minsk Group’s "Adjusted timetable", including the withdrawal of forces from recently occupied territories.On November 11, 1993, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 884, condemning the recent violations of the cease-fire established between the parties, which resulted in a resumption of hostilities, and particularly condemning the occupation of Zangilan district and the city of Horadiz, attacks on civilians and bombardments of the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and demanding the unilateral withdrawal of occupying forces from Zangilan district and the city of Horadiz and the withdrawal of occupying forces from other recently occupied areas of the Republic of Azerbaijan.Armenia`s military aggression resulted in the occupation by the Armenian armed forces of 20 percent of the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan – Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven adjacent districts, including the town of Khankandi, the districts of Khojaly, Shusha, Lachin, Khojavand, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan, as well as 13 villages in Tartar district, 7 villages in Gazakh district and 1 village in Sadarak district in Nakhchivan.During the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, more than one million Azerbaijanis became IDPs, while 20,000 people were killed in military operations and 50,000 were wounded and became disabled.As an outcome of the conflict, 4,000 Azerbaijanis went missing, including 67 children, 265 women and 326 elderly people. Fate of those people still remains unknown. More than 2,000 Azerbaijanis were captured and taken hostage by the Armenians. From 1988 to 1993, 900 settlements, 150,000 houses, 7,000 public buildings, 693 schools, 855 kindergartens, 695 health centers and hospitals, 927 libraries, 44 temples, 9 mosques, 473 historical monuments, palaces and museums, 40,000 museum exhibits, 6,000 industrial and agricultural enterprises, 160 bridges and other infrastructure facilities were destroyed in Karabakh.Monuments representing world importance, which are located in Azerbaijan`s occupied lands, include medieval Khudafarin bridges with 11 and 15 spans and Niftali kurgans of the Bronze Age in Jabrayil, medieval Ganjasar and Khudavang monasteries in Kalbajar, 14th century Gutlu Musa oglu mausoleum and Uzerliktepe residential settlement of the Bronze Age in Aghdam, Azykh and Taghlar cave of the Paleolithic in Khojavand, and the Bronze and Iron age kurgans in Khojaly.The mediation process for the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was launched as part of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) in February, 1992. On March 24, 1992, the Committee of Senior Officials convened the Additional Meeting of the CSCE Council in Helsinki where the Council decided to convene a special conference in Minsk that would act as a permanent framework for negotiations to find a soonest possible peaceful solution to the conflict in accordance with the CSCE principals, commitments and provisions.On May 12, 1994, a ceasefire agreement was reached. At the CSCE Budapest Summit on December 5-6, 1994, Heads of State and Government of the CSCE participating States set up the institution of the Co-Chairmanship of the Minsk Conference in order to coordinate all mediation efforts within the CSCE framework. The Budapest Summit tasked the CSCE Chairman-in-Office to conduct negotiations aimed at concluding a political agreement on the cessation of the armed conflict, the implementation of which would eliminate the consequences of the conflict and allow the convening of the Minsk Conference.On March 23, 1995, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office issued a mandate for the Co-Chairs of the Minsk Process. At the OSCE Lisbon Summit, which was held on 2-3 December 1996, the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group and the OSCE Chairman-in-Office recommended the principles, which should be the basis for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. But Armenia did not accept these principles and was the only one out of 54 OSCE participating States not to support them.Azerbaijan hopes that the world community will take more resolute and continuous steps to ensure a fair settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict that will pave the way for the establishment of the environment of peace, security and cooperation in the region and to press Armenia into starting work on a final peace deal that implies a final settlement of the conflict based on the main principles proposed by the OSCE Mink Group co-chair countries, which are influential members of the international community.Many international organizations have adopted numerous documents on the settlement of the conflict in accordance with the principle of Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity.The UN General Assembly Resolution of March 14, 2008, covered legal, political and humanitarian aspects of the conflict and reaffirmed the principles of its settlement. These principles reaffirmed Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, expressing support for the country’s internationally recognized borders and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all occupied territories, reaffirmed the inalienable right of the Azerbaijani population to return to their homes, and reaffirmed that no state should recognize as lawful the situation resulting from the occupation of Azerbaijan’s territories, or render assistance in maintaining that situation. The resolution also recognized the need to provide secure and equal conditions of life for Armenian and Azerbaijani communities in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which would allow an effective democratic system of self-governance to be built up in the region within Azerbaijan.The conflict has repeatedly been discussed within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Guided by the principles and norms of international law, the organization recognized the fact of military aggression against Azerbaijan. The 21st Session of OIC Foreign Ministers held in Karachi, Pakistan, back in 1993, adopted a resolution, condemning the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan, demanding the immediate withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied lands, and urging respect for Azerbaijan`s sovereignty and territorial integrity and peaceful, fair resolution of the conflict based on the principle of inviolability of borders. In other resolutions, the organization urged the UN Security Council to play an active role in finding a political solution to the dispute, ensure the implementation of the four resolutions and recognize the fact of invasion against the Republic of Azerbaijan.At its 2016 Summit in Istanbul, OIC established the Contact Group on the aggression of the Republic of Armenia against the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Contact Group includes seven countries: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Morocco, Djibouti, and Gambia.The European Union urged the execution of the resolutions of the UN Security Council, withdrawal of the Armenian army from the occupied Azerbaijani lands, respect for territorial integrity and internationally-recognized borders of the sides, and an end to the internationally illegitimate and forced situation. The Joint Declaration signed at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels on November 24, 2017, reaffirmed the European Union`s determination to support territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of all its partners.In the early 2016, when specific plans for the settlement of the conflict were discussed, Armenia once again committed a military provocation, shelling densely populated areas, including schools, hospitals and worship sites along the line of contact on April 2. The Armenian attacks killed six Azerbaijani civilians, including children, while 33 people were seriously injured. The Azerbaijani armed forces launched a successful counter-offensive to retaliate the enemy`s provocations, and liberated strategically important positions. The April battle led to complete liberation of Jojug Marjanli village in Jabrayil district from Armenian occupation. Large-scale restoration and construction works were carried out under President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Mr Ilham Aliyev`s Orders to restore Jojug Marjanli and bring life in the village back to normal.Armenia continued its political and military provocations in 2017 too. The Armenian military units intensively shelled the Azerbaijani armed forces’ frontline positions and civilian population from heavy artillery. This resulted in the killing and wounding of two civilians in Alkhanli village in Fuzuli district on July 4.Despite all the peaceful efforts of Azerbaijan, Armenia with its destructive policy hampers the step-by-step resolution of the problem, tries to undermine the negotiation process through political and military provocations, and aims to achieve the war goals by perpetuating the current status quo based on the occupation of the Azerbaijani territories.The Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be resolved within the international borders and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. The entire world community unambiguously recognizes and supports Azerbaijan`s sovereignty and territorial integrity. President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said: “Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity has never been negotiable. And it will never be… Azerbaijan will never step back one inch from this position. That is, no concession will be made in relation to Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity…”