Policy Brief is available only in Armenian.

The business world has long appreciated the value of trust: people are ready to pay more for a known brand as it represents the trust shaped throughout years. Today intelligent companies sell trust: they know well that once their customer feels cheated, they will lose them, and most probably not only them. An error in weighing a product in a shop or market means the customer will not want to go back there again. Interruptions to water or energy supply at home? We immediately call the hot line to find out what the matter is and when to expect a restored supply.

Resources necessary to maintain a political dialogue and to resolve issues through negotiations have considerably shrank after what happened in the National Assembly on 2 October and what followed. Perhaps it is only but natural. It is a truism that sides are willing to negotiate when there is trust, even little. When trust is breached, people do not see the need for negotiating.

At the moment, a week after 2 October, the opposing political poles, which were supposed to negotiate, are not ready to do so

Is it possible at all to achieve a final decision on holding a snap election exclusively through political decisions and political agreements? Can parliamentary factions discuss the future of the parliament together? Is it possible to negotiate whether the parliament should be dissolved on not; to reach an agreement about a new role, collaboration or anything else? A coin, as usual, has two sides.

Investing in early child care and development services is a crucial component of public policy to prevent gender-biased sex selection. Our numerous studies on prevalence and causes of gender-biased sex selection, women’s labour force participation, and work-life balance issues unconditionally support this statement.

Investment in extending early childhood care and development services will greatly contribute to balancing the reproductive and productive roles of men and women in the society and family, as well as, to widening the currently limited opportunities for women to realise their expectations to work and reproduce and at the same time to effectively combine both. This will support replacing the option of “either…or” in decision-making with the option “both…and”.