Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian says there is no mass migration from Armenia of ethnic Armenians displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh, despite large numbers having left the country in the immediate aftermath of Azerbaijan's lightning offensive in late September.
An overwhelming majority of Nagorno-Karabakh's estimated population of 100,000 people fled their homes and crossed into Armenia following Azerbaijan’s one-day military offensive on September 20.
Pashinian, speaking during the government’s weekly session on November 23, said that "a rather disturbing number" of Karabakh Armenians left the country in the first days after their exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh.
In September, he had put the number of those who left at an estimated 3,000.
"We assumed then that in most cases people were just going abroad at the invitation of their relatives and that they would later return," Pashinian said on November 23, claiming that the situation "has stabilized" currently.
The Armenian government provided the displaced people with both financial assistance and housing relief.
Karabakh Armenians who did not have a place to stay in Armenia were provided with temporary shelters in community housing. The government further allocated financial aid to the displaced people to help them pay for rent and utilities.
Armenia is a strategically located but relatively poor Caucasus country, where an estimated quarter of its 2.8 million people live below the poverty line, and its economy has been impacted in recent years by the COVID-19 pandemic and a second war with neighboring Azerbaijan in late 2020 that lasted six weeks and left 7,000 soldiers on both sides dead.
Pashinian, however, said in his address that Armenia had created some 180,000 new jobs over the past five years despite all difficulties, bringing the number of registered jobs to what he said was a record 730,000.
Pashinian said that the influx of displaced Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, despite all the current difficulties, will eventually have a beneficial effect and "jobs will continue to be created as a result of the full involvement of our brothers and sisters forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh in the labor market."