As of 1997, 360,000 refugee families have settled in Armenia. Until
this day only 65,000 people have become Armenian citizens. Only 3800
families have been provided with homes. At the present, around 10,000
families do not have a place to stay. According to official data, the
level of unemployment among the refuges surpasses that of the ordinary
citizens by two times and it is three times less than the people that
do have jobs.
In 2004, for the first time, the government of the Republic of Armenia
made a decision to provide settlements for the refugees who had escaped
from Azerbaijan and needed a place to stay. With that resolution
(#747-N), a board of project coordination and implementation was
founded in order to find financial means. The first stage requires
providing 3740 refugees with homes. Approximately $16 million dollars
is necessary for making the project a reality. Of the 16 million, five
million goes to the government of the RA and the board must get the
rest from donor organizations: “Armenia must collaborate with the
European Developing Bank and receive long-term loans without percents,”
says vice chief of the Migration department David Hakobyan. This
project must be realized through the course of 2005-2007. Until now,
this issue has been solved through the financial aid provided by
international organizations, including the Supreme Body of the UN’s
Refugee Office. With the help of Germany and Norway, nearly 3500
families have settled in homes. Money from Armenia’s state budget has
been granted for giving homes to 300 families. There are no official
statistics about this. In order to have statistics, there is a
necessity of money which the Department of Migration and Refugees does
not have. The 2002 consensus did not give any statistics about the
number of refugees and people who do not have any citizenship. Mrs.
Lusia’s family has escaped from Baku and taken refuge in one of the
student hostels in Armenia. None of the family members have Armenian
citizenship and they present a certificate of refuge as identification.
Mrs. Lusia receives pension and subsidy and she is enlisted in the
Immigration department for receiving a home. Her family does not want
to be citizens of Armenia because they might lose the chance of getting
a home. These types of cases are few. For example, three of the five
families living in the #123 building of the Villa have been granted
Armenian citizenship. The #123 building is a hostel and after
privatization the owner has made the three families living there
illegally to vacate the premises through court. The other two families
have been settled in homes temporarily by the Immigration department.
So, it turns out that if a refugee becomes an Armenian citizen, he or
she is deprived of the privileges that only refugees have. “If we all
come to terms with that citizenship issue, then that will mean that
Armenia will no longer have the issue of refugees,” says president of
the “Ahazang” (Warning) Refugee NGO Grisha Oganezov. “The international
organizations will stop doing their job in Armenia and will close the
subject of refugees without even getting close to solving the issue.” A
new issue has come to play recently: the organizations granting
pensions and subsidies to the refugee families have started asking for
an Armenian passport. “I have gotten many complaints from both the
regions and Yerevan,” says President of the Refugee Forum Hranush
Kharatyan. “Those complaints have no legality, but where they come from
I have no idea.” It is clear that the issue of the citizenship of
refugees is something that concerns the local and international
organizations. We can not say that a similar demand could be made by
the UN or any other international organization. It is hard to say
exactly which local state structure had made that “internal demand”. No
matter how surprising it may sound, the Immigration Department has not
received such complaints. At least, that’s how Vice Director of the
Immigration Department Mr. Hakobyan affirmed. Even President Robert
Kocharyan had made a promise to resolve the issue concerning the
refugees during his presidential campaigns in the past two-three years.
Two years have passed and the issue still remains unsolved. “There is
no country in the world where the issue concerning refugees has
remained unsolved for 16 years,” says expert of the Human Rights office
Edward Polatov. “If they can’t solve the refugees’ problems, then they
should not do anything at all. They should ask for help from other
countries and organizations. Otherwise, they are just showing off by
pretending to solve the issues.”