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A group of people displaced from Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) during the 2020 war held a protest outside the Armenian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs on Monday, demanding that the government grant them refugee status and provide them with housing.

"The Armenian government must provide compensation for the houses we have lost,” the chairman of the For Hadrut NGO, Levon Hayryan, said at the protest.

He dismisses the government’s fresh arguments that the displaced people are not citizens of Armenia.

"We have been demanding refugee status for three years now. They rejected the request, saying we were Armenian citizens. Now it’s time to provide us with housing, so they want to rip up all our rights, claiming that we are not [Armenian] citizens. Let’s assume that we are not citizens, they themselves announce that the Artsakh people are not citizens of Armenia. But today Mikayel Arzumanyan or other army officers are standing trial and being interrogated. If they are not citizens of Armenia, why are they being tried here in violation of international laws?" Hayryan noted.

The Labor Ministry has failed to pay pensions to the displaced people in recent months.