QAFSAM (Caucasian Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies) was founded on December 13th, 2006 by Araz Aslanli, Nazim Jafarov and Rizvan Ganbarov. The mission consisted of reinforcing efforts towards more sophisticated studies of Azerbaijan’s foreign and security policies, contributing to democracy and human rights application processes and bringing the media to a contemporary level.
It is our belief that a significant amount of work can be done to achieve our goals by involving the Azerbaijani youth, especially those with a Western education.
Our first activity was to prepare short reports on diverse dimensions of Azerbaijan’s foreign policy and ongoing process in various corners of the world. These reports have been submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, overseas embassies of Azerbaijan and other relevant government authorities and individuals by email. The reports were initially for 2006, with a report for the first three months of 2007 set up later. As of the summer of 2007, QAFSAM has launched an International Review journal with the goal of promoting interest among Azerbaijani youth in foreign and security policy research.
There are several units within QAFSAM: Strategic Studies (SS), Media Studies, Democracy Development and Human Rights Studies.