Up until this month, the government gave each refugee, who does not own a home or live in a government shelter in Armenia, 50,000 drams ($125) per month for rent and utility fees. The aid program has benefited the vast majority of some 105,000 Karabakh Armenians who fled their homeland after it was recaptured by Azerbaijan in September 2023.
The government decided in November 2024 to start phasing out the housing scheme. Starting from April 1, the financial aid will be provided only to children, university or college students, pensioners and disabled persons forced to flee Karabakh. The monthly allowance paid to them will be cut to 40,000 drams in April and to 30,000 drams in July.
Armenia – Refugees from Nagorno Karabakh live in a school gym in Artashat turned into a temporary shelter, October 9, 2023.
A lack of affordable housing remains one of the main problems facing the refugees. Thousands of them rallied in Yerevan on March 29 to demand that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s cabinet rescind its controversial decision. Organizers of the rally also voiced a dozen other, mostly political demands.
Three of them were received by Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatrian on Thursday to discuss the issue of the housing allowances. They said Khachatrian made clear that the government will not restore the financial aid.
“The protests will continue,” one of the Karabakh activists, Apres Markarian, told journalists. “We expected this response from the government.”
Markarian said the organizing committee will announce shortly the dates and other details of its further actions.
A group of other Karabakh Armenians gathered outside the main government building in Yerevan during their representatives’ meeting with the vice-premier.
Armenia – Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrate in Yerevan, March 29, 2025.
“We don’t really have expectations,” one woman told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “But we can’t stay silent and keep waiting for something.”
“We didn’t come to Armenia of our own free will. We were forcibly displaced, and forcibly displaced not just by the Azerbaijanis. I would say that that was done by joint efforts,” she said, clearly pointing the finger at Pashinian’s administration.
Pashinian said in November that the housing aid cut will encourage working-age Karabakh Armenians to “start thinking about supporting their families through their own work.” According to the Armenian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, 26,400 of them have jobs or own businesses in Armenia.
Many of those refugees complain that they earn barely enough to rent small apartments in Yerevan or surrounding areas that offer far more job opportunities than other parts of the country. Housing prices in and around the Armenian capital have soared in recent years.
