A Battle For Hope

by Bruno Marsiaj

From the 18th to the 28th of March, David Gonzalez, VP Communications at RESPECT International, had the chance to visit Armenia. During his 10-day trip, Mr. Gonzalez visited the entire country, seeing the general situation in camps set for refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDP), while interviewing representatives of several local and international NGOs. The refugees in these camps are those who had to flee from Azerbaijan, while IDPs relocated from other areas inside Armenia.

According to him, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to help the local population. "The resources of (Armenia¥s) inhabitants were set to a very minimum, (making) the integration difficult (for) those thousands of refugees and IDPs needing help and assistance." Fortunately, according to Mr. Gonzalez, many international and local organisations, as well as the United Nations, established offices and programs with the aim of providing relief and support to both the refugee and the local community. With this help, they can hope for a better future.

Close to half a million Armenians are currently living as refugees or Internally Displaced People (IDPs) inside their own country, after fleeing an earthquake or war that hit parts of the country and neighbouring Azerbaijan during the last decade and a half. Not being able to pick any belongings as they flew to safer grounds, these people were forced to be relocated in quite poor conditions all across the country, in different villages set up for the refugee and IDP population.

Their integration into the local population has been mostly successful, since they share a common language and culture. However, the living conditions remain pretty bad for the newcomers. Villages were set up without meeting minimum living condition standards, as many refugees were obliged to live in train wagons or decrepit buildings, sometimes without electricity, heating or water. To make matters worse, the economic situation of the entire country was also affected during the last 15 years, with the direct impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union, war and an earthquake, making it even harder on those who found themselves living as refugees.

Local NGOs provide help to different groups of IDPs and refugees in the suburbs of Yerevan. With no heating, and most of the time no electricity, elders and people living alone have a hard time just getting by. There is also a general lack of medical care, with the closest hospital being a 40-minute ambulance drive away. Supported by WFP and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a local NGO named Mission Armenia managed to hire refugees that were formerly nurses, doctors or social assistants. They are living in the same buildings and are thus closer to the people they are taking care of. By empowering the community in making them work together, the local NGO hopes to ensure the survival of their community.

Other organisations try to create a common action through the use of local people skills, hoping refugees will act instead of waiting for an intervention of the state to solve their problems - as used to be the case under the soviet regime. A good example of this is the work developed since 1993 by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

At the same time, some projects run by international groups in Armenia focus on creating seasonal employment for thousands of unemployed or under-employed people, not letting them become too dependent on external aid. The World Food Program (WFP) has two main programs to help the country: Food for Training and Food for Work. One of the priorities is to repair local schools, focusing on sanitary facilities, kitchens and cafeterias. Nearly 80 schools have been repaired each year for the last six years. The work developed by WFP since 1993 also includes training on production and harvesting techniques, mainly for wheat.

The task of tracing missing people and exchanging prisoners of war in the country, on the other hand, is left with international organisations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). After 10 years of work, the ICRC estimates that there are more than 3000 pending claims of people who still do not know the fate of their relatives. The Red Cross believes many of them will not be located, since there are no records after they fled their homeland. The exchange of prisoners of war is the second largest action in Armenia, with Armenia and Azerbaijan taking the necessary steps to return prisoners captured during the war.

Not all is bad though, as many young refugee and IDP students have been able to integrate into the regular school system with other children from the local population. To help raise awareness of the refugee situation in the country and further help these students and their family, RESPECT is studying the possibility of implementing a project in Armenia, be it through a letter exchange program or the shipment of computers, books and other material to help these people adapt to their new lives.

You can get a copy of the complete evaluation report filed by Mr. Gonzalez on our website. The file is in PDF and is 492Kb. To appropriately view this file, you will need a copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader software, available free of charge at www.adobe.com.

Websites:

• International Organisation for Migration - www.iom.int
• World Food Program- www.wfp.org
• International Committee of the Red Cross - www.icrc.org
• Mission Armenia - www.mission.am
• U.S. Agency for International Development - www.usaid.gov