Category: 2020

Serzh Sargsyan addresses April War-related issues (Parts 1-4)

George Mamian
Panorama, Armenia
Aug 7 2020

Third President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan answered several questions of public interest in four short videos released on Friday.

The videos entitled “Let’s speak openly: Serzh Sargsyan on April War” is the ex-president’s first direct communication with the public since 2018.

Question: What prevented you from speaking out?

Serzh Sargsyan: I kept silent for a long time because I didn’t want to worsen the situation in our country, deepening the polarization and further dividing our society. 2018 was a very emotional year. Chaos and aggression were growing day by day, making only our enemies happy. And in that emotional environment a significant part of our society was not ready to hear simple truths. It took time for everyone to understand the situation on their own. But we will talk about all this in detail.

VIDEO

Question: Did the April War inquiry committee find out the truth? What is it?

Serzh Sargsyan: The truth is the following: in April 2016, our aggressive neighbor [Azerbaijan] attacked us and lost.

VIDEO

Question: You were accused of losing 800 hectares of land during the April War. Was it really a victory?

Serzh Sargsyan: Yes, it was definitely a victory.

VIDEO

Question: Why did so many Armenian soldiers and officers lose their lives?

Serzh Sargsyan: I sincerely regret that it was not possible to save everyone. My thoughts and emotions are with every family. It is unrealistic to expect that we will not suffer casualties during hostilities. But we all witnessed how heroically our soldiers and commanders fought. 75 of them remained forever young, sacrificing their lives for Artsakh and Armenia.

Question: How would you assess the operations of the Armenian army?

Serzh Sargsyan: According to foreign intelligence, we inflicted four to five times more losses of soldiers, officers, including senior officers, and weaponry to the adversary.

Even our opponents have recently started claiming that the Azerbaijanis, according to their data, have lost more than 1,000 soldiers. After such a great battle and victory, we were full of grief, but at the same time, we were proud of our soldiers, officers, generals, all those who took part in that heroic battle. 

VIDEO

View all 4 videos at

Armenian PM holds consultation on Firdusi District construction project

Emil Lazarian
Panorama, Armenia
Aug 7 2020

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia on Friday held a consultative meeting to discuss the Firdusi Residential District-33 construction project, which is under development. The project implies a total building area of 58,000 square meters, 49,000 square meters have already been alienated; 9,000 square meters are yet to be alienated. 378 families have received compensation, and 50 families are in the process of receiving compensation, the PM’s office reported. 

There are 7 teams strong with 60 architects working on the micro-district construction project. $60 million will be disbursed in compensation. The estimated investment cost is $300 million. 8-10 thousand new jobs will be available during the implementation stage.

The executives in charge of the project assured that great attention will be paid to architectural monuments. The district will have several underground parking lots.

A number of proposals and recommendations were voiced during the exchange of views that followed. Highlighting the conservation of architectural monuments, Pashinyan called for strict compliance with the previously developed standards until the project’s completion.

Serbia mends fences with Azerbaijan after selling arms to Armenia

Khoyetsian Rose
Al-Jazeera, Qatar
Aug 7 2020

President Aleksandar Vucic speaks to his Azerbaijani counterpart, seeking to patch up relations.

Serbia has tried to patch up relations with Azerbaijan after a spat over Belgrade’s sale of arms to Baku’s rival Armenia.

The weapons sale was sensitive as a long-running Azerbaijan-Armenia border conflict recently escalated into deadly clashes.

In a phone call with his Azerbaijani counterpart, President Aleksandar Vucic on Friday underlined Serbia’s “friendship” and “strategic partnership” with the oil-rich country, according to a statement from the presidency.

Vucic invited President Ilham Aliyev for an official visit and sent a special envoy to Baku “to prepare the meeting”.

A spat erupted in July when it emerged that Serbia was selling mortars and ammunition to Azerbaijan’s foe Armenia during a fresh bout of violence.

The two ex-Soviet countries are locked in a decades-old conflict over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Serbia initially defended the private weapons sale as legal, but President Vucic later described the deal as a “wrong decision”.

Azerbaijan is an important ally for Serbia, as Baku backs Belgrade’s refusal to accept the independence of its former province Kosovo, which officially broke away in 2008.

Serbia’s Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic earlier met the Azerbaijani ambassador and expressed “regret” for deaths among security forces in the recent fighting.

Stefanovic faced scrutiny last year after his father was linked to an arms trade scandal.

Some of the companies that have exported weapons to Armenia since 2018 are allegedly under the control of Slobodan Tesic, a United Nations-blacklisted arms dealer, according to local investigative media.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

Armenia to become homeland for Arabs and Assyrians?

Greg Madatian
News.am, Armenia
Aug 7 2020

16:44, 07.08.2020
                  

Court cancels arrest of Armenia TV channel owner’s property

Nahapetian Zhanna
News.am, Armenia
Aug 7 2020
Court cancels arrest of Armenia TV channel owner’s property Court cancels arrest of Armenia TV channel owner’s property

16:19, 07.08.2020
                  

Outpost cabins installed by Lydian Armenia have been removed

Anna Tamamian
News.am, Armenia
Aug 7 2020

07:17, 07.08.2020

The outpost cabins installed by Lydian Armenia company have been removed from the area of the Amulsar gold mine project.

Those who have been protesting for the past three days are following this process.

The demonstrators had three demands: To move 30 meters from the area the outpost cabins new security service which Lydian Armenia has hired, to remove the company’s security team from the Amulsar area, and to make a clear decision on Amulsar by the government.

The Amulsar gold mine has been in development by Lydian International since 2016. According to the company, the project meets all the requirements both legal and environmental and could open hundreds of jobs and generate millions of dollars in tax revenues.

However, some residents and activists are protesting the decision.

How Armenia’s Women Tech Executives Navigate The Once Male Dominated Sector – Part 2

Andranik Taslakhchian
Forbes Magazine
Aug 7 2020
Jackie AbramianContributor

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

ForbesWomen
I cover women social entrepreneurs, peace builders and change agents.

With double-digit annual growth rates, Armenia’s tech sector has become the countries largest–employing 20,000 workers. Once dominated by men, now the country’s tech sector employs 30 percent women–larger than the 20 percent global average of women employed in IT.

Two women tech executives discuss their journey through the male-dominated sector.

Amalya Yeghoyan is executive director of Gyumri IT Center (GITC) and Project Manager at Enterprise … [+] Incubator Foundation (EIF).

Amalya Yeghoyan

Amalya Yeghoyan is executive director of Armenia’s second largest city, Gyumri IT Center (GITC) and Project Manager at Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF) where 70 percent of employees are women.

Gayane Ghandilyan Arakelyan is CEO of Digital Pomegranate–one of the world’s premier Flutter development agencies, and one of Armenia’s largest tech companies where over 50 percent of employees and 70 percent of top management are women.

“Men who lived in the regional villages discouraged their wives from taking coding or programming classes, so I approached the women’s involvement from a non-threatening angle to their husbands by offering women remote work options in website development or digital marketing,” Yeghoyan explains how providing a laptop, enabling distance learning options opened the “work from home” opportunities for women to “not only manage their family affairs but make considerable financial contribution.” 

PROMOTED

Since taking over as CEO at the Gyumri-based Digital Pomegranate Arakelyan has increased business growth by 32 percent amidst a pandemic. Co-Founder Todd Fabacher says resigning and nominating Arakelyan as CEO was the “smartest business decision.” Arakelyan kept all 40 staff on the payroll while asking upper management to take a pay cut.

“I had been the CEO for a few months when the largest crisis in almost a century hit. I was making a decision that could have bankrupted the company. But I had faith we would manage with remote work,” Arakelyan admits losing some clients, but signed two major global clients: Sony Music’s global ERP Purchasing system, Sony/ATV modern reporting and Business Intelligence, and the Australian Government. The company hired four new full-time staff and is now offering free classes and paid internships for 100 people in Gyumri “to build an even better future after the crisis.”

A former IT journalist, Arakelyan co-founded Digital Pomegranate in 2013, and considers creating the startup TriviaMatic.com the highlight of her tech career. She’s proud her company was a global sponsor of #Hack20 along with Google and eBay. Its all-female team won 3rd place in the 2019 Seaside Startup Summit. Now Digital Pomegranate is developing business tourism in collaboration with Gyumri region tech companies–its Flutter co-working space, a guest house, and a “Dart cafe” in the heart of Gyumri will accommodate start-up entrepreneurs who can also tap into Digital Pomegranate’s team.

“We are going to be a bridge between local tech talent and the international business community to grow tech and tourism sectors, which we think are the best solutions for the economic development of our region,” Arakelyan also wants her company to be Armenia’s first Internationally Certified Women-Owned Business.

While still feeling the pressure of comparison to male counterparts, Arakelyan is more focused on proving to herself vs. others. “The pressure for women in the tech industry goes away with time, experience, success and wisdom,” she says.

The pressure is similar for Yeghoyan, who when negotiating with men early on, made them believe she sought their advice, to gain their respect. Yeghoyan was instrumental in bringing tech companies to Gyumri with the 2014 inauguration of the Technopark– a collaboration between EIF, the Armenian government and the World Bank.  By 2017, with tech booming in Gyumri, GITC offered youth coding classes to prepare the future tech workforce. Now plans are to empower other regions by replicating the Gyumri model with the conviction that any village can succeed.

“One woman can have an impact, motivate and inspire a team–there’s nothing impossible. You have to smile when it’s difficult because you must consider the big umbrella under which you are working–Armenia’s success,” Yeghoyan is determined to build the tech sector across Armenia’s regions to stop the unemployed from emigrating.  She oversees EIF’s regional technological and international business development projects and the joint academic research projects between Armenia and such U.S Universities as Columbia, San Jose State and Rutgers, through a partnership with Philip Morris research center in Yerevan that offers Ph.D. research grants in technology and science.

Another EIF success story is Engineering City. Formed by EIF as a joint initiative by the Government of Armenia, World Bank and National Instruments, it has assembled Armenian engineers who are developing thermometers for temperature screening in response to Covid-19 as well as working on AI, and hi-tech solutions for energy, robotics, automotive among others. Armenia’s tech sector is no longer exclusively dominated by men as women executives are integrating tech into the tourism and other sectors to boost Armenia’s economic development.

“We need to change the mindset–women’s confidence is critical in how we approach work which means we need to have men as engaged without ruffling their ego but clarifying that we are on the same team,” says Yeghoyan. “I’m more confident now because I believe in the power and the impact women can have because we’ve proven ourselves already.”

[Read Part 1 of this article for more background on Armenia’s women in tech]

European Union brings relief to victims of hailstorms, floods in Armenia’s Gyumri

Babken Chilingarian
Panorama, Armenia
Aug 7 2020

A devastating hailstorm hit the city of Gyumri in Armenia in mid-July, followed by floods that caused substantial damage to housing and infrastructure. In response, the European Union is providing €80,000 in humanitarian funding to assist the most affected people, the EU Delegation to Armenia reports. 

This EU funding supports the Red Cross in delivering much needed relief aid, including cash assistance to help the most vulnerable cover their immediate basic needs such as food and hygiene items; vouchers for clothes; and the distribution of mattresses, pillows, blankets and bed linen.

The humanitarian aid will directly benefit 2,670 individuals whose belongings and houses were severely damaged or destroyed by the hailstorm and subsequent floods. The funding is part of the EU’s overall contribution to the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

On 13 July 2020, a heavy hailstorm hit Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city. Whilst the country has repeatedly faced hailstorms in the past, the most recent one was unprecedented in its scale and impact on the urban area. About 1,000 households were affected, out of which 600 (2,670 persons) still live in container-housing that was built as ‘temporary shelters’ following a devastating earthquake in 1988. These households are considered critically vulnerable and require immediate humanitarian assistance.

Armenia’s Women Tech Trailblazers Are Forging New Horizons – Part 1

Elizabeth Jabejian
Forbes Magazine
Aug 6 2020
Jackie AbramianContributor

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

ForbesWomen
I cover women social entrepreneurs, peace builders and change agents.

(L-R) Amalya Yeghoyan (Ex. Director, GITC), Gayane Ghandilyan Arakelyan (CEO, Digital Pomegranate), … [+] Marie Lou Papazian (CEO, Tumo Center)

A. Yeghoyan, G. G. Arakelyan, M. L. Papazian

Nestled between Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, the landlocked Republic of Armenia’s thriving technology sector reached $250 million in 2018 while the country of three-million peacefully overthrew an oligarchic regime. As the world’s next tech hub, Armenia’s tech sector has enjoyed double-digit annual growth rates employing some 20,000 workers–30 percent of whom are women. Armenia is also the global leader for the “Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality” action coalition of the UN-led Generation Equality Forum.

“Tech is the new culture in Armenia,” says Amalya Yeghoyan, executive director of Armenia’s second largest city, Gyumri IT Center (GITC) and Project Manager at Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF) where 70 percent of employees are women. A former Deputy Minister of IT, Yeghoyan previously managed the Gyumri Technology Center (GTC).

EIF is conducting the “Empowering Females through Capacity Building to promote technology in non-technology sectors” program delivered by IFC/World Bank Group in partnership with the UK Government’s Good Governance Fund. With investment, growth, and job creation among Armenia’s female entrepreneurs through capacity building, investor connection and access to global business networks, intensive bootcamps and acceleration programs will be held in Yerevan, Gyumri, and Vanadzor–Armenia’s capital city, second and third largest cities, respectively.

“While globally, the average share of women employed in IT doesn’t exceed 20 percent, in Armenia it’s 30 percent,” underscores Senior Analyst, Wireless 20/20 consultant, former Yankee Group CEO, Berge Ayvazian. He is an angel investor and one of the Diasporan co-founders of the Armenian High-Tech Council of America (Armtech), instrumental in attracting investments and acquisitions by such companies as Synopsys, National Instruments, Mentor Graphics, VMware among others.

Even before the 2018 bloodless “Velvet Revolution” captured world attention, Armenia’s tech industry was on over-drive, building upon the Soviet-era ecosystem when Armenia (the smallest of the former republics) manufactured 40 percent of the mainframe computers for the Soviet military. Fast forward to independent Armenia, home to over 900 ICT companies where start-ups enjoy 10 percent income tax and where 50-60 percent of applicants at the university IT departments are women.

PROMOTED

(L-R) Gayane Gasparyan (Co-founder/CTO, Forge Fiction), Yeva Hyusyan (Co-founder-CEO, SoloLearn) … [+] Seda Papoyan (Founder, Girls in Tech, Armenia and CoderDojo Armenia).

G. Gasparyan, Y. Hyusyan, S. Papoyan

Armenia is ground zero for award-winning, globally recognized technology start-ups–many led by women, some 30 years old or under, or hailing high percentage of women employees including among the extensive list:

  • Digital Pomegranate–one of the world’s premier Flutter development agencies, and one of Armenia’s largest tech companies–with CEO, Gayane Ghandilyan Arakelyan–50 percent of employees and 70 percent of top management are women.
  • Synopsys-Armenia (the largest office outside the U.S.)–one of Armenia’s largest IT employers with over 650 employees–33 percent of its 600+ engineers are women. While women employees comprise only 15 percent of Synopsys’ Silicon Valley headquarters.
  • DASARAN–cloud-based Educational Development System ranked by UNDP as one of the world’s top 5 social enterprises –with Deputy CEO, Rima Sargsyan–72 percent of employees are women.

(L-R) Nare Gevorgyan (Co-founder and Chief Design Officer, Embry Tech), Rima Sargsyan (Deputy CEO, … [+] DASARAN).

Nare Gevorgyan – Rima Sargsyan

  • WeDoApps–a premier web and mobile application development company–with CEO, Anahit Manukyan, top managers and 50 percent of employees are women.
  • PicsArt– all-in-one photo and video editing app with over 150 million monthly active users, ranked 5th in Forbes Top 50 Startups of 2015–51 percent of employees are women.
  • Tumo Center for Creative Technologies–a new kind of educational experience at the intersection of technology and design–with CEO, Marie Lou Papazian–51 percent of its employees and contractors are women.
  • Girls In Tech, Armenia–a chapter of the global non-profit designed to end gender inequality in high-tech industries and startups–with Founder, Seda Papoyan (also Founded CoderDojo Armenia) led by a team of four women, with 200 registered members and a network of over 1,000 girls and women.
  • SoloLearn–free student-centric open crowd-learning–with Co-founder-CEO Yeva Hyusyan–46 percent of employees are women.
  • Forge Fiction–community-driven platform created by an all-female team, transfers universe creation and story writing from individuals to communities–with Co-founder-CTO Gayane Gasparyan–55 percent of employees are women.
  • Embry Tech–technology to turn all types of shoes to a biometric data tracking and wellness monitoring device–with Co-founder and Chief Design Officer, Nare Gevorgyan–50 percent of the founding team are women, as are 47 percent of employees. 
  • Krisp–background noise cancellation for remote workforce, among Forbes Top 50 AI companies–25 percent of employees are women.

“Women are really essential in the tech sector as they are bringing a complementary strength and point of view,” says Nare Gevorgyan of Embry Tech. “I’m proud to see our numbers are growing in Armenia.”

Papoyan of GIT-Armenia explains how Armenia’s intergenerational women are readily quitting their day jobs to participate full-time in tech intensive courses. “We had a lady in her 60s register for our introduction to programming course–and was one of our top graduates who was immediately employed.”

Seda Papoyan with participants of #Teens4Change program, which offers technology and business skills … [+] to youth 15-18 in the northern city of Ijevan.

Girls in Tech, Armenia

Inspiring school children to jump on the fast-paced tech sector, GIT-Armenia’s LikeAGirl in Gyumri offered tech programs for youth, and UNFPA in Armenia supported #Teens4Change that offered technology and business skills to youth 15-18 in the northern city of Ijevan to generate innovative technical business solutions to meet local communities’ needs. Final student projects, presented at the UN offices in Armenia, included plastic recycling, tourism, and an anti-café and led to local authorities designating space for the youth to expand on their ideas. Amidst the pandemic all programs are now offered online.

The CoderDojo Armenia–joining the global movement of volunteer-led, community-based free coding clubs for youth ages 7-17, also provides young programmers mentoring opportunities. Supported by Innovative Solutions and Technologies Center (ISTC) which hosts weekend DoJo’s, over 500 Armenian children have participated in the CoderDoJos which are on hold due to Covid-19 as Papoyan and her team seek private funding and sponsorships to remain sustainable. The team’s post-Covid-19 programming will focus on Armenia’s regions and on the science behind the technology to better understand Covid-19 pandemic. They will continue to up-skill girls and women with online courses on basic literacy, digital marketing and recently had the US embassy approval of “STEMpowered girls Armenia” to help create a network of STEM girl ambassadors across all regions in Armenia.

[Look for Part 2 of Armenia’s women in tech-coming tomorrow]


Armenian St. Thaddeus Monastery in Iran hosting exhibit to mark UNESCO-listing anniversary

Emil Lazarian
Public Radio of Armenia
Aug 6 2020

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 A painting exhibition is currently under way at the Armenian St. Thaddeus Monastery in Iran on the occasion of the 12th anniversary of the monastery’s inscription on UNESCO World Heritage list, Tehran Times reports.

The exhibition, which displays 77 paintings by children and teenagers, was inaugurated by Archbishop Gregor Chiftechian, director of Iran’s Armenian monastic ensembles Sherly Avedian said.

Also known as the Qareh Klise (“the Black Church”), the monastery is one of the oldest surviving Christian monuments in the country. It is situated in Chaldoran county, some 20 kilometers from Maku, adjacent to the borders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.

The ancient church shows off elaborate bas-reliefs of flowers, animals, and human figures on its facade and exterior walls. It bears verses of the Old and New Testament in Armenian calligraphy as well.

St. Thaddeus Monastery hosts an annual religious ritual every summer. Last July, it hosted over 3,000 Christian worshippers coming together from Iran, Armenia, Syria, Lebanon, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Germany, Canada, and other countries.

Baptism of children and youngsters along with performances of traditional songs and dances are among highlights of the pilgrimage.

The festivity is of high importance for Iranian-Armenians who mostly come from the cities of Tabriz, Urmia, Tehran, Isfahan, and Qazvin, to stage the reunion in groups and families.

Attendees commemorate the martyrdom of St. Thaddeus, one of the twelve disciples killed while he was preaching the Gospel. The legend says a church dedicated to him was first built in 68 CE where Qareh Klise is standing.

Thaddeus was an apostle of Christ and the ceremony is rooted in the last supper with Jesus Christ on the night of his arrest and execution by the Roman soldiers.

Together with St. Stepanos Monastery and the Chapel of Dzordzor, Qareh Klise was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2008 under the name “Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran”.