Armenian communities in the present stage (Scientific-Practical Conference) The opening speech of “Noravank” Foundation’s Executive Director Gagik Harutyunyan
In the stage of preparing for the conference the experts of “Noravank” made an attempt to calculate how many Armenian communities there were in the post Soviet territory and found out that there were at least 117 communities. At the same time, according to our experts, 117 is quite an approximate number. I’ll dare to express an opinion that our expert community doesn’t know the exact number of Armenian communities spread all over the world. Moreover, we are not quite aware of the processes and developments progressing in the communities. One should only mention that the last conference devoted to Armenian communities was held for about 20 years ago.
All these have come to prove that the knowledge about the Armenian communities, that’s to say about us, Armenians, is less than enough. Thus, the organization of the conference “Armenian communities in the present stage: struggle for survival and prospective” is more than urgent.
Enjoying the honor of opening the conference I would like to express a hope on behalf of the Organizers that as a result of the conference our ideas in the field will take a shape making our attitude to one of the most national problems, the problem of communities, better grounded. Let me also mention that the conference is both of scientific and practical character and in this practical realm there is still a big variety of problems to be solved as quickly as possible. Let me mention the most important ones out of them:
- The creation of a specialized structure or structures proficient in solving the problems of Armenian communities.
- Creation of Armenia-Armenian community general field.
- Formation and realization of Armenia-Communities joint national program.
- Organization of a well thought repatriation.
It goes without saying that these problems are of strategic character and when the matter concerns serious problems people in our society say that they are to be solved by the state. Agreeing with that idea we should also realize that the society in general and expert-analytical community in particular make the part of that state and it equally relates to the organizers of the Conference – Caucasus Media Institute and “Yerkir” Union. Of course it also relates to “Noravank” Foundation, especially taking into account the fact that the initiative of organizing the Conference engaged in the problems of Diaspora was displayed by “Noravank” Foundations late Chairman of Board of Trustees Andranik Margaryan.
Continuing the subject of the state I’d like to give the floor for a speech of welcome to the RA Chief of Government Staff, the member of Board of Trustees of “Noravank” Manuk Topuzyan.
