Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Armenia Home to 300,000 Refugees



Chance are you didn't know about this, because I surely did not:
...the number of refugees across the globe reached 10 million in 2006...and including more than 300,000 in Armenia. The Iraqi crisis is cited as the main reason for the increase.

About 400,000 people took refugee in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh because of the Karabakh conflict that broke out in 1988...some 360,000 came to Armenia from Azerbaijan, and the other 40,000 came from other republics of the former USSR...many of the refugees abandoned Armenia because of heavy social conditions.
Two important points to realize:

1) Armenia has a disproportionately large population of refugees, accounting for 3% of all the world's refugees in a country that comprises 0.05% of the world population.

2) Refugees found it difficult to remain in Armenia and eventually dispersed shortly after the Nagorno-Karabakh war ended.

I am shocked at both of these conclusions.

Source: Armenia Now

2 comments:

Ankakh_Hayastan said...

Did you the Hetq article where an Iraqi family wants to return to Iraq because they can't stand the conditions in Armenia?

Now that's shocking!

http://www.hetq.am/eng/society/0706-iraq.html

Rhyne said...

Indeed! According to the article that I referenced, "many" families couldn't stand it there and had to leave!

Sad, really.