Following the September-October 2023 exodus of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population, the government not only provided many refugees with monthly housing allowances but also paid the tuition fees of Karabakh university students. No such scholarships will be granted to newly admitted students in the upcoming academic year.
One of them, Anna Nazarian, learned about that after being admitted to the journalism school of the Russian-Armenian Slavonic University in Yerevan. She now has to fully pay an annual tuition fee of 600,000 drams ($1,570), a hefty sum for most of the 105,000 Karabakh Armenians who fled their homeland almost two years ago.
“It’s not that 15 or 20 years have passed since those events,” Nazarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “We hoped to get at least partial [tuition] compensation but now understand that we are not going to get it.”
“Newly admitted students have no such opportunity anymore, even though their social vulnerability persists,” said Gegham Stepanian, Karabakh’s exiled human rights ombudsman. “I think that the [government’s] decision is not logical and must be changed.”
Stepanian has appealed to the government to restore financial support for these and other Karabakh students, arguing that most refugees still lack adequate housing and struggle to make ends meet. He said that although there has been no official reply yet, he has been unofficially told that the government is unlikely to grant his request.
The government’s Committee on Higher Education and Science said, meanwhile, that like other students of state-run universities, Karabakh Armenians would still be eligible for tuition reimbursement after their strong academic performance recorded during a particular semester. This means that first-year students admitted to universities this summer will not get such a chance this year.
Starting from June 1, the government also stopped paying each refugee, who does not own a home or live in a government shelter in Armenia, 50,000 drams ($125) per month for housing rent and utility fees. Such aid is now allocated only to children, university or college students, pensioners and disabled persons forced to flee Karabakh. The monthly allowance paid to them has been cut to 30,000 drams.
The phasing out of the housing scheme sparked street protests in Yerevan by thousands of refugees in March. They only forced the government to postpone the aid cuts by two months.