Five Women in Armenian Municipal Government Visit Massachusetts Counterparts through CYSCA

The last panelist, Shushanik Danielyan, is from the Yeghegis Consolidated Community, which contains 12 villages, and is located in Vayots Dzor Province. Danielyan remarked that among its famous products is wine from Areni, which is both a toponym and the name of variety of grapes. Danielyan is Development Program Coordinator for the Yeghegis municipality, and works to promote tourism and economic development.

Even before the Artsakh Armenian population was forced to flee last month, Yeghegis had already hosted 300 forcibly displaced people from Artsakh. Danielyan noted that there is a youth organization founded in 2021 through which volunteers help the displaced Artsakh Armenians. Youth of the area also are active in the Syunik Development NGO, which was founded in 1996.

The five visiting panelists spoke in Armenian and their words were translated by Hovhannisyan. The last part of the slideshow was narrated by Antonyan, who spoke fluent English (she has an undergraduate degree from Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania and a graduate degree in political science from Villanova University). Antonyan emphasized that the number one issue facing Armenia today was its security and territorial integrity. The Armenian government has also raised the right of return of the displaced Artsakh people, with their need for safety and security. She said that the Armenian government attempts to raise these issues in various forums.

She also spoke about the problems of the refugees, who need immediate shelter, housing, economic integration and employment so they can stay in Armenia.

Discussion

The panelists then fielded a variety of questions from the audience. They described how the Artsakh refugees were distributed in all the different provinces of Armenia very quickly. They spoke about the difficulties of women in government. Though the law requires that at least 30 percent of municipal council members be women, they are not always given the same respect or authority as other members.

All council members must in theory belong to a political party slate, but in practice on the local level the political parties don’t really work because local people don’t consider ideology or party, according to one panelist. They just choose the group they think will win, so people switched to the Civil Contract Party (the party of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan) to get in power, but the same people were always involved in election fraud.  Another panelist, Avetisyan, declared that in Vardenis all parties work together for the benefit of their community, though there were some emotions and complications during elections.

Danielyan noted that she and Harutyunyan, as municipal employees, were not members of political parties and so were nonpartisan.

Some of the panelists expressed their surprise at how clean the US was, and the sense of punctuality and responsibility of citizens. All of the panelists expressed thanks to the organizers of their visits. They declared they learned a lot and would use that information in their work back in Armenia.

Recently, Etmekjian revealed one more interesting bit of news to the Mirror-Spectator: shortly after the delegates left, COIL notified CYSCA that it would be awarded another grant on the topic “Cultural Heritage Preservation in Armenia,” scheduled for July 10-20, 2024.