How many forcibly displaced residents of Nagorno Karabakh left Armenia?

Different numbers of forcibly displaced residents of Nagorno Karabakh who left Armenia are regularly circulated in the media.

In December 2023, a number of social media users and websites spread information that the number of residents of Nagorno Karabakh who left Armenia is 25 thousand. And earlier, in October, former State Minister of Nagorno Karabakh Artak Beglaryan announced that about 10 thousand residents of Nagorno Karabakh have left Armenia.

Note that Armen Ghazaryan, Head of the Migration and Citizenship Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Armenia, announced during the 2023 press conference that as of January 2024, 115,000 citizens forcibly displaced from Nagorno Karabakh had been registered.

The Fact Investigation Platform sent a written inquiry to the National Security Service to find out the number of forcibly displaced residents of Nagorno Karabakh who left Armenia.

Thus, in the period from September 19, 2023 to January 16, 2024, 12,203 persons registered in Nagorno Karabakh left the country through the air and land crossing points of the state border of the Republic of Armenia, of which 5,770 returned.

It results that as of January 16, 2024, the number of people who were registered in Nagorno Karabakh and who left Armenia and did not return is 6,433.

Thus, the official data contradicts the claims circulated on the Internet earlier that the number of residents of Nagorno Karabakh who left Armenia exceeds 10 or 20 thousand.

Nane Manasyan