On October 3, the Armenian Center for National and International Studies (ACNIS), the country's original institute of strategic policy analysis and global affairs, marked the 25th anniversary of its founding with an official reception at its headquarters.
Ambassadors and other dignitaries, local analysts and international specialists, current and former ACNIS employees, media professionals and members of the public gathered in a show of appreciation for a quarter-century of service to Armenian democracy, institutional policy making, and free competition of ideas.
Raffi K. Hovannisian, this Armenian think-tank "mothership's" founding captain and the Republic's first minister of foreign affairs, welcomed the assembled guests and the Center's associates of all times including, in memoriam, the brilliant late intellectual Tigran Hairapetyan.
"ACNIS," he said, "has over the past 25 years and in the most challenging of circumstances engaged national and international expert resources to deliver strategic work product on the critical domestic and foreign policy issues of the day...and of the century. The Center, as Armenia's first independent ‘think tank,’ has firmly registered our worldwide nation upon the map of global geopolitics."
On the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the Center has released a special 2019 Strategic Summary briefly illustrating the year’s most important landmarks and the Center’s quarter-century chronology. The remaining pages encapsulate volumes of political analysis and work product on different topics, monographs, national and international forums on the most fundamental issues in the political field, sociological research and public-interest discussions of their results, training of young experts, and a number of other directions.
The Armenian Center for National and International Studies is a leading strategic research center headquartered in Yerevan. As a non-profit institution committed to conducting professional multi-disciplinary research and analysis, it strives to raise the level of pan-national discourse and seeks to broaden civic engagement in the policy-making process, thus fostering greater and more inclusive public knowledge.
Founded in 1994 by Raffi Hovannisian, Armenia’s first Minister of Foreign Affairs, ACNIS has acquired over the years a prominent reputation as a primary source of independent expertise covering a wide range of national and international policy issues. A brilliant constellation of Armenian political scientists, researchers, and policy-analysts, as well as public, political and state figures has been forged by their passage through the halls of the Armenian Center for National and International Studies.