Shocked refugee children in Armenia miss the things they left behind: UNICEF

Emil Lazarian
UN News
Oct 6 2023


6 October 2023Humanitarian Aid

Following the mass exodus from Karabakh, UN agencies in Armenia have been mobilizing resources to support the refugees and the national authorities. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is focused on ensuring the safety and well-being of boys and girls, who account for about one third of the roughly 100,000 refugees.

UNICEF’s Representative in Armenia, Christine Weigand, said prepositioning of supplies, including medicines and food, allowed the agency to swiftly respond to the crisis.

Arrangements made in establishing relations with the authorities, civil society and academia after the tensions of 2020 were very instrumental, she explained. 

Ms. Weigand spoke to UN News about her team’s work to help the young refugees overcome the immediate shock of displacement, ensuring that they have access to food, winter clothes, toys, and safe spaces to play. 

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.  

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Christine Weigand: In less than a week, about 100,000 people arrived in Armenia, and among them, around 30,000 children. They’ve all come through this little town that I’ve visited twice now in the South of Armenia, Goris, which is a little town of only 20,000 people in normal circumstances, that had to deal with this huge inflow.  

By now, many families have moved on to different parts of the country, either because they have relatives or friends there or because the Government also has allocated different shelters in different regions of the country to be able to host all those people.  

UN News: You said that you went to Goris. Did you have a chance to talk to the children to understand what they have gone through and what are their needs?  

Christine Weigand: In the initial days of families arriving in Armenia, I visited the registration centres that the Armenian Government had set up. Those registration centres had “health points” where nurses and doctors were working, and I was speaking to them asking them in what physical state and mental state are children arriving. And they all said the same thing: the children arrive hungry, showing signs of malnutrition, they arrive very tired, a lot of them have a fever or other kinds of disease. The psychologists that were working in these centres also were saying that children arrived in a state of shock and trauma and were struggling also to comprehend what had been happening to them.   

From the very early days we set up a children’s corner in Goris, which is basically a safe space where children can go, can access services, can get psychological support, but also medical support.  I spent a bit of time there on the two occasions that I went down to Goris to talk to the children. I have to say many children were not very much willing to engage. That’s a sign of what they’ve been through.  

There was one group of boys – three brothers and their mom – who were telling us that they had very little time to just grab the most essential things. Each boy was able to take one little backpack in which he could choose what to put in: basically, fundamentals like underwear and so on, and one or two little toys that they could fit in. They had that sense of longing for the things that they had left behind. And they were excited when they were in the children’s corner to see that there were a lot of toys that they could play with. They were jumping around, running around, playing with balls. It was a joy to see them reclaim some moments of the joy of childhood.  

In the long term, of course, education remains the big question, because that many children to be accommodated in the education system also is a major effort to undertake, a major challenge. We have seen that some of the teachers have been trying to find their students again and trying to organize that they can meet each other again just to create some sense of normalcy. But this is obviously a very, very difficult proposition. And this happens after many months already where they’ve been living through a difficult situation.  

The Ministry of Education from the very early days already said that they would integrate these children into the school system. I think there are more than 6,000 children that have been integrated and registered, but clearly those are very big numbers for a small country like Armenia.  

UN News: What does UNICEF offer in this situation? What kind of support do you provide to the people in the first instance and to the Government?  

Christine Weigand: We’re looking at the different types of support. We had already prepositioned some supplies for the last few months already. We had been working on preparing, given our humanitarian mandate to make sure that we are ready for the kind of crisis that we now unfortunately see unfolding.  

We have immediately also handed over to the Ministry of Health medicines and medical supplies, specifically for children. We’ve also been procuring additional medicines and also therapeutic food for the children that show signs of malnutrition. We’ve been setting up the children’s corners. We now have two in Goris. We’re setting up more across the country, given that now children are all over the country in different communities. 

We’re working closely with the Ministry of Education to look into setting up temporary learning spaces, additional capacities to accommodate children and also to train teachers on how to best work with these children and to integrate them into existing classes and in the school system.   

Obviously, the big question is also livelihood, how families are going to be able to make ends meet. The Government has already announced cash transfer schemes, one of which will cover the first six months, that is an equivalents of a rental subsidy. And we’re working with the Ministry of Labour now to see what else will be needed specifically for families with children, for example, vouchers to purchase clothes for the winter. And also to estimate what other expenses will need to be covered, for example, for education, when they go into the schools.  

UN News: What message would you like to leave with our audience?

Christine Weigand: The scale and speed of this displacement of population, leaving everything behind and coming into Armenia, is certainly a very unique and a very big challenge for all of us as a humanitarian community. But also, beyond that, we really want to see how we can support the Government, the civil society, to really ensure that children especially are getting everything that they need to grow up safe and healthy in this completely changed environment, so that they don’t take with them from these experiences a very long-standing trauma. I think this needs to be our common aim.  

 


World Court to Hear Armenia’s Demand for Azerbaijan Withdrawal

Ara Felekian
U.S. News
Oct 6 2023
By Reuters

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – The World Court will sit next Thursday to hear Armenia’s demand for an emergency order to Azerbaijan to withdraw all its troops from civilian establishments in Nagorno-Karabakh, the court said on Friday.

It is the fourth time the World Court, formally known as the International Court of Justice, will hear a request for emergency measures as part of two competing legal disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Both states accuse each other before the ICJ of violating a U.N. anti-discrimination treaty.

In February, the United Nations’ highest court ordered Azerbaijan to ensure free movement through the Lachin corridor to and from Nagorno-Karabakh after already ordering both sides in December last year of refraining from any actions that would aggravate their dispute.

Last month, Azerbaijan launched a military operation that caused more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of “ethnic cleansing” in Karabakh, which Baku denies.

The World Court in The Hague is the U.N. court for resolving disputes between countries. Its rulings are binding, but it has no direct means of enforcing them.

(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-10-06/world-court-to-hear-armenias-demand-for-azerbaijan-withdrawal

Samaritan’s Purse Helping Displaced Armenians

Boris Nahapetian
Oct 5 2023
OCTOBER 5, 2023 • ARMENIA
A SAMARITAN’S PURSE TEAM MEMBER PRAYS WITH A WOMAN, ONE OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ARMENIANS WHO HAVE FLED THEIR HOMES.

More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians have fled the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The mass exodus, in cars and buses filing over the Hakari Bridge, marks the latest humanitarian crisis in the rugged Caucasus region.

A Samaritan’s Purse Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) is on the ground in Armenia where we are working with local church partners to deliver relief as tens of thousands of displaced families arrive in need of shelter, food, water, and other relief. Our medical teams will begin working in local hospitals to meet needs as dozens of people were burned in a gas explosion. We also will be providing hot meals to displaced families as well as basic items such as personal hygiene kits, diapers, cleaning supplies, bed linens, and blankets.

Samaritan’s Purse has previously brought relief to this region, in response to war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020. We used our DC-8 to airlift more than 22 tons of emergency supplies to Armenia—including coats, boots, thermals, gloves, socks and beanies. A team of disaster response specialists also distributed winter kits, blankets, food, and more to over 8,000 displaced families. Additionally, mobile medical teams provided critical care to more than 500 patients.

Please pray for hurting families during this current crisis, for our church partners serving them, and for potentially overwhelmed host communities. Pray also that God would bring peace to this region of longstanding conflict.

Azerbaijan rabbi to Armenian Jews: ‘Leave before it’s too late’

Ani Kharatian
Jerusalem Post
Oct 6 2023
By ZVIKA KLEIN

Rabbi Zamir Isayev, a prominent figure in the Jewish community of Azerbaijan, issued an immediate and dire warning on Thursday over the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh: “I repeat my call to the Jews in Armenia: Leave, and if you need help, I’ll take care of it. Leave before it’s too late…”

The Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan, historically inhabited by ethnic Armenian Christians, has been at the center of a longstanding conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

“A few weeks ago I warned that staying in Armenia is dangerous for Jews.”

Rabbi Zamir Isayev


Isayev’s plea, via a video and tweet on X (formerly Twitter), resonates with urgency and fear, a sentiment that has been building over the past few weeks. As the director of the Baku Jewish school and of the Georgian-Sephardic Jewish community in Azerbaijan, Isayev urged Armenian Jews to leave their country, in order for them to stay safe.

In the tweet, Isayev added: “A few weeks ago I warned that staying in Armenia is dangerous for Jews. Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry raised the possibility of violence against Jews twice during the last month. The reason is Israel’s close relations with Azerbaijan, and also the fact that we, rabbis, oppose the usage of the Holocaust topic for propaganda purposes.”


The rabbi’s warnings materialized tragically when he revealed: “Unfortunately, in the middle of the Sukkot holiday there [was] an attack on the synagogue in Yerevan. But this was expected – hate speech provokes violence and intolerance. Desecration of a synagogue anywhere in the world is a serious crime. We reject with disgust any threat to damage the holy places of the people of Israel.”

Earlier this week, the World Jewish Center in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, was vandalized in an act thought to be directly related to Israel’s growing relations with neighboring adversary Azerbaijan.

According to the estimates of the local Jewish community and the World Jewish Congress, Armenia is home to around 500-1000 Jews, mostly of Ashkenazi origin with some Mizrahi and Georgian Jews, localized in the capital, Yerevan.

The European Union on Thursday invited the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan for talks to try to revive a peace process thrown into crisis by an Azerbaijani military operation that prompted more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee Nagorno-Karabakh.

Charles Michel, the president of the European Council of EU leaders, said he had invited Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to meet in Brussels by the end of October.

“We believe in diplomacy. We believe in political dialog,” Michel told reporters as he announced the meeting at a summit in the Spanish city of Granada of the European Political Community, a forum of more than 40 countries.

Aliyev snubbed a proposed meeting with Pashinyan, Michel, and the leaders of France and Germany at the summit. But Michel said he expected both sides to attend the Brussels talks, noting Baku had said it would take part in future EU-mediated meetings.

At the summit, leaders also pledged support for Armenia as it grapples with the fallout of the Azerbaijani military operation last month to seize control of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, mainly populated by ethnic Armenians.


Macron says Azerbaijan has ‘a problem with international law’

Badalian Vardan
Oct 6 2023
Reuters | Granada
French President Emmanuel Macron denounced Azerbaijan on Thursday for taking military action in Nagorno-Karabakh, insisting that the French government’s position was correct even if Baku considered it biased in Armenia’s favour.

“France has no problem with Azerbaijan but Azerbaijan seems to have a problem with international law,” Macron said. He added sanctions against Azerbaijan would be conterproductive at this point.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/2619618-macron-says-azerbaijan-has-a-problem-with-international-law

Is The Karabakh Conflict About Religion, Armenians Wonder

Greg Madatian
BARRON’S
Oct 6 2023
  • FROM AFP NEWS
By Thibault MARCHAND

Picture by Alain Jocard. Video by Stuart Graham

With its manicured lawns and ancient cross-stones, the church of Saint Gregory in Goris is a haven of peace in the chaos of a city full of Armenians fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh.

Anush Minassian, Bible in hand, came to ask Father Vardapet Hakobyan, a priest from the Armenian Apostolic Church diocese of Syunik, to bless her two daughters.

They just arrived to Armenia from Stepanakert, the capital of the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is set to disappear at the end of the year.

Minassian had no news of her husband, who was reported missing when a petrol station near Stepanakert exploded on September 25, killing early 200 people.

She had scant hope of finding him alive.

This was not the only fear eating away at the 41-year-old worshipper.

In September, mainly Muslim Azerbaijan seized Nagorno-Karabakh, which was populated by Christian ethnic Armenians.

More than 100,000 of its 120,000-strong population have fled the territory, where there has been a Christian presence for more than a millennium and which is home to numerous Armenian holy sites.

“Everything is threatened. Our Christianity is threatened,” she said. “We’ll have to fight to salvage what’s left.”

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the 1990s that killed 30,000, Yerevan has accused Baku of rewriting history to stake its claim to Nagorno-Karabakh and say Armenians shouldn’t be there.

Armenians have dark memories of the bombing in 2020 of the Shusha cathedral in Karabakh, a symbol of Armenian religious identity.

Nor have they forgotten the destruction two decades ago of the medieval Armenian cemetery in Julfa.

ALAIN JOCARD

The graveyard in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan once contained thousands of intricately carved memorial cross-stones, or khachkars.

Father Hakobyan gives short shrift to Azerbaijan’s pledge to respect Armenian rights and culture.

He is convinced Baku is out to eradicate all traces of Christianity from this part of the Caucasus.

“The Christian world must stand up to this genocide,” he said. “Otherwise everything is lost.”

In the Armenian capital, Yerevan, 200 kilometres (125 miles) to the northwest, the Saint Sarkis cathedral was packed for the “national day of prayer for Artsakh”, the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh.

A relic of the military saint — his right hand coated in silver — was brought in for the occasion from the cathedral in Echmiatsin, the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Azerbaijan’s lightning takeover of Karabakh on September 20 has disrupted the Church’s calendar.

It postponed the ceremony planned for October 1 to bless Saint Myron, a religious event that takes place every seven years and brings together Armenian Apostolic Churches from around the world.

But not everyone sees the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as a religious one.

“It’s a war for territory, that’s all,” Saint Sarkis priest Shahe Hayrapetyan, who has a soft voice and sparkling eyes, told AFP.

He offered an example: Shiite Muslim Iran, which shares a 50-kilometre border with Armenia, is home to several thousand Armenians who are free to practise their Orthodox faith.

Many Armenians feel let down by Russia, their historic Orthodox backer, and have little faith in the comforting noises coming from Western capitals.

Instead, they consider Iran to be the only remaining ally they can trust.

The government in Tehran has warned its Azerbaijani counterpart against any attempt to create a land corridor through Armenian territory to link Azerbaijan proper to Nakhichevan and Turkey.

Iran has both commercial and political motives for opposing the Zangezur Corridor project.

It wants to keep a foothold in the Caucasus and prevent Azerbaijan creating a land link to its ally Turkey, a member of the US-led NATO military alliance.

Alain JOCARD

“I don’t believe this conflict has have religious origins,” says 35-year-old Edmon Harutiuniyan, a worshipper at Saint Sarkis.

“Look: in recent months, Iran has helped Armenia more than any other country.”

The tourist guide, who prays with fervour, clasping his clenched fist to his chest, says Armenians “don’t have a problem with Islam”.

He points out that there are politicians of Armenian origin in many Muslim-majority territories, from Lebanon and Syria in the Middle East through Central Asia and the region of Tartarstan in European Russia.

“Our conflict with the Turks and the Azerbaijanis is about our very existence,” he says.

“They’re the ones trying to turn it into a religious conflict.”


https://www.barrons.com/news/is-the-karabakh-conflict-about-religion-armenians-wonder-35915a8b 

Refugee Children From Nagorno-Karabakh Begin Class in Armenian Schools

Antonian Lara
Oct 6 2023

Thousands of ethnic-Armenian children who fled the Nagorno-Karabakh region after an assault by Azerbaijani forces on September 19 have begun attending classes at schools in Armenia, according to government and media reports.

On Wednesday, the Armenian prime minister’s press secretary, Nazeli Baghdasaryan, said more than 29,000 children were among 100,625 forcibly displaced people who had arrived in Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, and said their education was a priority for the government.

On Friday, Baghdasaryan told media that 7,904 children – roughly 38 percent of school-aged children who had arrived – had been enrolled in schools so far. The government was also looking to hire more teachers and advertised 1,035 vacant positions across the country.

This footage published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on Friday shows students at a school in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, where they said around 20 evacuee children were enrolled. The video includes interviews with children from Nagorno-Karabakh, including a girl who becomes tearful while recounting how her family was forced to leave their home, and an interview with a teacher from Nagorno-Karabakh who said she was hired immediately after arriving in Armenia, according to translations provided by RFE/RL. Credit: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty via Storyful

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/refugee-children-nagorno-karabakh-begin-185308785.html

Ethnic Armenians who fled Nagorno-Karabakh long for home, decry Azerbaijan

Emil Lazarian
Al-Jazeera, Qatar
Oct 6 2023

Having fled the long-troubled mountainous enclave, many say they will not return as they bank on more support from Yerevan.

By Jessie Williams
Published On 6 Oct 2023

Yerevan, Armenia – Alisa Ghazaryan was full of excitement and nerves as she started her first year at university in Stepanakert, having moved from her village home in Nagorno-Karabakh.

But just as term began, Azerbaijani forces began shelling the city, which Baku knows as Khankendi, on September 19.

As they carried out what they cast as an “anti-terrorist operation”, the 18-year-old took shelter in the university’s basement.

“I was born there, I grew up there,” she said of her home. “When I was there, I felt completely free.”

Until recently, Nagorno-Karabakh, a long-troubled mountainous enclave, was home to about 120,000 ethnic Armenians who dominated the region. Since Baku’s lightning offensive, more than 100,000, including Alisa, have fled to Armenia.

Despite assurances by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to protect their civil rights, many say they feared persecution after years of mutual distrust and open hatred between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Several displaced people Al Jazeera spoke to in Armenia said they were expecting a massacre.

According to ethnic Armenian officials, at least 200 people were killed in Baku’s assault, including 10 civilians, and more than 400 were wounded.

Baku played down the claims of civilian casualties but acknowledged “collateral damage” was possible.

Azerbaijan, which announced that 192 of its soldiers were killed in the operation, said its blitz was aimed at disarming ethnic Armenian separatists in the region, parts of which now resemble a ghost town.

Al Jazeera was unable to verify either side’s toll.

The assault came after a 10-month blockade, effectively imposed by Azerbaijan after it closed the Lachin corridor to Armenia, preventing the flow of food, fuel and medicine. Baku had accused Armenia of funnelling weapons to separatists through the winding, mountain road, a claim denied by both parties.

The local unrecognised government surrendered after 24 hours of fighting. Aliyev said his “iron fist” restored Azerbaijan’s sovereignty. Late last month, Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian officials said the region will cease to exist as a self-styled breakaway republic on January 1 next year.

Alisa and her family fled through the Lachin corridor, which has since been reopened.

They are staying at a friend’s house outside the Armenian capital, Yerevan. Fourteen people currently live in the cramped space, sharing two rooms.

At night, they sleep side by side on the living room floor.

“We are only here to not be on the streets,” said Alisa.

It’s a far cry from their house in Karabakh, which they had just finished renovating.

The journey to Armenia, which usually takes several hours, took days for some, as people poured out of the region.

The European Parliament this week said the “current situation amounts to ethnic cleansing”.

Those who left are scattered across Armenia, facing an uncertain future and mourning the loss of their homeland.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as Azerbaijan’s territory, including by Armenia. The ex-Soviet rivals have fought two wars over the enclave, in the nineties and in 2020. The first conflict saw ethnic Armenians seize swaths of land, resulting in the displacement of Azerbaijanis, while Baku triumphed in the 2020 war. Since then, Russian peacekeepers have operated in the region, but Armenians blame them for allowing Azerbaijan’s latest attack, which was widely condemned in the West.

Now, there are only a few hundred left in Karabakh, mainly elderly or disabled people.

“The nature was so beautiful. There are mountains and forests. Our home was right on the edge of a forest, we used to walk there a lot,” said Alisa, as she looked at a photo on her phone of a verdant hillside.

Ina, her mother, wanted to throw away the key to their house, but Alisa begged her not to.

“Maybe one day we will go back, maybe when I am an old woman,” Alisa said hopefully.

“Aliyev describes us and our heroes as terrorists, but in reality, he is the terrorist. I want the world to know that Artsakh is our motherland and not [Azerbaijan’s],” she added, using the self-styled name for the region.

Many of those displaced had already fled, in previous wars.

Angela Sazkisjan-Yan, a glamorous 65-year-old, left Baku in 1995.

“Nobody would stay [in Karabakh] because everybody clearly knows the handwriting of Azerbaijan,” she said.

Some people destroyed their furniture or dishes before they left, but Angela cleaned her flat in Stepanakert, and even left the refrigerator on and filled with food, perhaps a symbolic gesture of her hope to one day return.

“Everybody left their property but that’s a small part of it – the worst part is that we left our homeland, our roots. Even my grandparents are buried there,” she told Al Jazeera in Abovyan, northeast of Yerevan.

She is staying with her sister’s family, whom she had not seen in two years.

“I am very happy to rejoin with them because we are an inseparable part of each other, but I have a big soul ache for everything that’s happened,” she said.

Many Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh say they were split up from relatives during the blockade.

Lilit Shahverdyan, a 20-year-old freelance journalist, was in Yerevan with her sister during the tensions, while the rest of her family was at their home in Stepanakert.

“We just hugged each other and started to cry,” she said, describing the moment when she finally saw her family, in the border town of Goris, after almost a year apart.

She said the blockade made her family closer and stronger than ever.

“All we have now is just our family and just one apartment in Yerevan. Everything else – not just the property, but all our memories, life goals, and the future was in our homeland – now it’s all gone.”

As her mother locked their front door for the last time in Stepanakert, tears streamed down her face.

“It was the most beautiful house. My father built it 10 years ago. I really enjoyed waking up there every day just going to the garden, hugging my cats or talking to my neighbours. In my childhood, everything was connected to that house.”

Lilit had hoped to return to Stepanakert to work after she finishes her university course in Yerevan. Now, she wants to leave Armenia altogether.

“I’m just afraid that some sh** will happen again. And I don’t want my kids to suffer as much as I did. Armenia is not a safe place as long as we have a neighbouring dictator and we have this government. I don’t want to have another traumatised generation,” she said.

Hopes of a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan seem to be fading after a crucial meeting planned for this week, between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, was cancelled by Azerbaijan at the last minute.

“It’s not only unrealistic, it’s also a crime to believe that now is the time to collaborate on a peaceful relationship,” said Angela, who said she knows 10 people who were killed in the recent fighting.

“They killed us, how can we live with them in peace?”

Ara Papian, an Armenian lawyer and former diplomat, thinks further aggression by Azerbaijan is possible in the future, particularly in the Syunik region where Azerbaijan wants to build a corridor through Armenian territory to connect with its exclave, Nakhchivan.

Even if a peace treaty is signed, Azerbaijan will “find an excuse and attack”, he predicted.

Papian accused the West of refusing to condemn and sanction Azerbaijan because some nations do not want to get on the wrong side of NATO member Turkey – Azerbaijan’s closest ally.

The European Union’s gas deal with Azerbaijan exposes the bloc’s hypocrisy, he added.

“The EU and the West do not buy oil and gas from dictator [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to not fuel the war in Ukraine, but they buy the same from Azerbaijan knowing that the money will go not to prosperity of people in Azerbaijan, it will become new weapons, which means a new war – which has happened.”

Housing is now the main priority for displaced people, said Margarit Piliposyan, deputy country director for the NGO Fund for Armenia Relief (FAR), which has been distributing food and humanitarian supplies in Vayk, a town south of Yerevan.

The Armenian government recently announced financial support for displaced people with 100,000 dram per person ($239) and then 40,000 dram per month ($96) for six months for housing costs.

However, several people told Al Jazeera they were yet to see any government assistance, such as Lira Arzangulyan, 33, and Alina Khachatryan, 31, two sisters, who fled after the latest escalation.

They moved with their four children and mothers-in-law, to Mrgavan village, in Artashat, a province in the shadow of Mount Ararat, where more than 100 displaced families now live.

They were previously displaced from their home in Martuni after the 2020 war.

The house is small with peeling wallpaper and one gas stove. It is cold inside – even on a mild September day. The owner is letting them stay there for free, for now.

“We don’t have any other place to go so we’re going to stay here. The houses for rent are too expensive, we can’t afford it. We are still uncertain and in shock,” said Alina.

The children play in the other room as their mothers cry softly. Lira’s mascara runs across her cheek as she says how much she misses visiting her mother’s grave in Karabakh.

They both lament the Russian peacekeepers, who Lira described as being “indifferent and doing nothing” to protect or help them.

The first United Nations monitoring mission visited Karabakh on Sunday.

“Why didn’t they come when we had nothing to eat? It is empty now, there is no one living there. If they came before this escalation started and they gave us hope and a guarantee that there is someone to support us, then we would have stayed there,” said Lira.

Their children run in and hug them close.

“I hope this next generation will change and maybe when our kids grow up they will be able to go back there, maybe as a tourist, to see where they’re from,” Alina added.

Catholic, Anglican bishops affirm support for Armenia

Kanayan Tamar
Vatican News
Oct 6 2023
As the Archbishop of Canterbury visits crisis-struck Armenia, the Catholic Bishops of Europe call for action to address the growing humanitarian emergency in the country.

By Joseph Tulloch

“I come here to say you are not forgotten.”

Those were the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, as he arrived in Armenia. 

The Anglican Archbishop is on a two-day journey to the country, which has been rocked by Azerbaijan’s recent annexation of the neighbouring enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Speaking on Thursday to His Holiness Karekin II, the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Archbishop Welby said: “Armenia was the first Christian kingdom. You were the first region to have the cross as your symbol. This is a symbol of weight, pain and struggle.”

“The last weeks have seen so many Armenians suffer deeply. I have been praying for you daily. I come here to say you are not forgotten.”

Archbishop Welby is in the region as part of a five-day “pilgrimage of listening”. Earlier this week, he visited Azerbaijan and Georgia, meeting with civil and religious leaders, including the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

On the day Archbishop Welby began his visit to Armenia, the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe, a Catholic grouping, released a statement echoing Pope Francis’ “repeated calls for a negotiated solution in the region.”

Noting that over 100 thousand Armenians have been displaced, they called on the international community to alleviate what they described as a “humanitarian emergency.”

Moreover, the bishops said, the exodus of the enclave’s Armenian population “is also endangering the Christian heritage of the region”, which must be “monitored” to prevent defacement.

In their statement, the European bishops referred to a Resolution passed in 2022 by the European parliament.

The Resolution observes that “considerable deliberate damage was caused by Azerbaijan to Armenian cultural heritage during the 2020 war.”

“Over the last 30 years,” it continues, “the irreversible destruction of religious and cultural heritage has been carried out by Azerbaijan, notably in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, where 89 Armenian churches, 20 000 graves and more than 5 000 headstones have been destroyed.”

The Resolution also condemns “falsification of history and attempts to present [Armenian heritage] as so-called Caucasian Albanian”, in reference to Azerbaijani government claims that historical and religious sites widely recognised as Armenian in fact belong to a now vanished culture.

Armenia struggles to assist refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh

Manouk Vasilian
Euronews
Oct 6 2023

More than 100,000 ethnic Armenian refugees need to find warm housing before the winter sets in.

In the town of Masis in Armenia, which lies on the border with Turkey,  around 10,000 ethnic Armenian refugees from the Nagorno Karabakh region are being processed by the local authorities.

The Red Cross is also located in the town hall building, where it works to identify the assistance the new arrivals need. Nearby there are rooms where people can collect clothes and other items donated by local people, ands there’s also a food distribution point. 

The refugees need to register so they can get monthly assistance payments from the Armenian government, but it’s a gargantuan task for the officials of a small town that itself only has a population of around 20,000.

Recognising that there will be no immediate solution to the refugee crisis, the Armenian government has decided to give each refugee a one-off allowance of 236 euros and later a monthly allowance of 118 euros to help pay for rent and food.

“They do help us here and take great care of us,” said one refugee, of the assistance she’s received.

“But it still hurts, it hurts a lot. Our family cemetery remained there, everything remained there,” she added.

Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing, which it denies. Azerbaijan’s military launched an attack on the Nagorno-Karabkh region on September 19th, killing around 200 Armenian fighters and scaring almost the entire ethnic Armenian population into fleeing to neighbouring Armenia. About 200 Azerbaijani fighters were also killed, according to officials.

Azerbaijan was helped by Israel when, just weeks before Azerbaijan launched its attack its military cargo planes repeatedly flew between a southern Israeli airbase and an airfield near Nagorno-Karabakh, according to flight tracking data and Armenian diplomats.

Experts estimate Israel supplied Azerbaijan with nearly 70% of its weapons arsenal between 2016 and 2020 — giving Azerbaijan an edge against Armenia and boosting Israel’s large defence industry.

Israel has a big stake in Azerbaijan, which serves as a critical source of oil and is a staunch ally against Israel’s archenemy Iran. It is also a lucrative customer of sophisticated arms.

In the previous conflict in 2020 Turkey supplied Azerbaijan with military drones, which experts said helped it capture parts of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the second city of Shusha.