CSR was part of the research project on cyber bullying

International concern is growing over the rapidly escalating turmoil in the South Caucasus, as fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan continues and is threatening to draw regional powers directly into the conflict, destabilising an area that serves as an important energy corridor for global markets.

The clashes that erupted on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border are threatening to push the countries back to another prolonged war 26 years after the last ceasefire was reached. The last Nagorno-Karabakh War took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan.

By participating in free and fair elections, citizens cast their votes expecting the officials they elect to represent their interests in the best possible way. The voters’ choice grants legitimacy to the elected representatives and the parties they are part of. This legitimacy allows politicians to enact and amend legislation in the way they find most appropriate and suitable – usually along the lines of a published policy platform or manifesto. While the competition for political power is an essential element in ensuring the democratic diversity of interests, the election process can become exposed to malicious attempts to influence the result, including attempts from foreign powers to try and manipulate voters with false messaging as well as outright interference in the electoral count.

 This reason alone should be enough to understand that protecting the integrity of elections is therefore a clear priority; both for individual states, but also for international organisations, such as the European Union. The threat has clearly been growing in the past couple of years, with a series of fairly blatant attempts to manipulate electoral processes in at least 18 countries, including the USA, Netherlands and the Ukraine.

The spread of the Corona pandemic has changed the dynamics of most political processes at the local, regional, and international levels. However, it is remarkable that actors of current terrorist groups from various ideologies have demonstrated significant abilities to adapt rapidly to those changes caused by the spread of Corona virus. Indeed, some terrorist groups have tended to use the virus as a tool to achieve their goals, such as the attempt of some terrorists in Tunisia to spread the virus among security personnel earlier this month. Through monitoring the behavior of violent extremist groups worldwide during the past weeks, it was possible to identify a number of paths through which Corona virus have influenced the movement of such extremist groups, or rather the paths that these groups are employing, to serve their purposes.
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