Armenia’s Independence Day: A Time for Reflection, Responsibility, and Resolve

Nor can we overlook the human consequences of displacement from Artsakh. Many displaced Artsakh Armenians have begun rebuilding their lives in Armenia, enrolling children in school, finding work, and forming new communities. Yet the trauma of war, loss, displacement, and separation from ancestral homes remains. Resettlement, housing, employment, education, mental-health care, and long-term integration are not temporary concerns – they are national responsibilities.

Independence has meaning only if it is matched by a commitment to the dignity, safety and future of all Armenian people.

Peace Without Erasure

Supporting peace and normalization does not require forgetting history, compromising fundamental rights, or silencing legitimate concerns.

Armenia’s geography and economic circumstances impose genuine constraints. Armenia is a small, landlocked country in a complicated region, and its leaders must navigate security threats, regional powers, closed borders, economic needs, and diplomatic pressures that are often beyond their control.

But realism cannot become resignation.

A durable peace requires more than signed documents, smiling photographs, or language about “moving on.” It requires security, reciprocity, lawful treatment of detainees, protection of cultural heritage, meaningful support for displaced people, and the assurance that Armenians are not being asked to relinquish their identity, rights, or future in exchange for one-sided concessions.

There is a difference between diplomacy and humiliation. There is a difference between economic opportunity and dependency. There is a difference between making compromises for peace and being asked to diminish one’s history and culture, or remain silent about what has been lost.

The Armenian people have survived not by forgetting, but by creating: schools, churches, books, music, art, businesses, community institutions, and families that carried language and memory across continents. That cultural resilience is not an obstacle to peace. It is the foundation from which a healthy, self-respecting peace must be built.

Artsakh Must Be Remembered

I have seen how deeply Artsakh Armenians loved their homeland.

During work on a documentary in Artsakh, I met people who spoke about their towns, mountains, churches, schools and family histories with profound pride and emotion. We drove through its streets, sat in its mountains, visited homes, and watched children participate in community life. At Ghazanchetsots Cathedral, sacred hymns filled a space that carried both faith and collective memory.

Artsakh was never simply a political issue to the people who lived there. It was home.

The displacement and loss of Artsakh as a lived Armenian homeland cannot be reduced to a geopolitical headline or a closed chapter. It represents the loss of homes, gravesites, schools, churches, and a centuries-old relationship between a people and their land. Whatever political realities prevail today, the cultural, spiritual, and personal meaning of Artsakh cannot be erased.

For a new generation, Artsakh must remain known.

It must be taught through family stories, literature, music, film, maps, language, food, art and the voices of those who lived there. This inheritance must be actively preserved and passed on – not reduced to a symbol or invoked only for political or ceremonial purposes.

Artsakh may now occupy a place in our consciousness similar to Mount Ararat: a presence that is physically beyond reach for many Armenians, yet impossible to remove from the Armenian imagination.

Who We Should Honor

If Independence Day is to have meaning at a time when many Armenians fear for the future of our national identity, let us honor those whose lives, sacrifices, and work shape Armenia and Armenian life.

Prisoners and detainees, whose freedom, safety, and rights must remain a public concern and be defended with urgency.

Displaced Artsakh Armenians, who carry immense loss while rebuilding lives, families, and communities under difficult circumstances.

Families of the fallen, who deserve lasting respect, care, and meaningful support.

Donors, whose generosity has built medical clinics, educational and cultural institutions, technology programs, youth centers, churches, scholarship funds, and social services across Armenia and the Diaspora.

Teachers, who keep Armenian language, history, literature, and cultural memory alive in classrooms around the world.

Artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, actors, scholars and cultural workers, who preserve what political upheaval cannot be allowed to destroy.

Diasporans and repatriates who invest time, labor, resources, expertise, and hope in Armenia – not as spectators, but as participants in its future.

Young Armenians, who deserve a country where history is respected, public service is accountable and a future can be imagined with confidence.

These are the people whose work makes independence meaningful.

But honoring them also requires accountability. Donors should ask how their funds are used. Community organizations should be held to standards of effectiveness, transparency, professionalism, and responsiveness to the people they claim to serve. Long-standing leaders should make room for capable new voices. Institutions and public officials should be judged not by their titles, photo opportunities, or polished rhetoric, but by the tangible results they deliver for Armenia and Armenian communities.

Love for Armenia should not demand silence. Quite the opposite: love requires rigor. It requires asking hard questions, refusing complacency, and recognizing that honest criticism is a form of duty to one another and to our homeland.

What Independence Must Mean

By the time we reached the UN’s flagpoles, Armenia’s flag had already been lowered. I told the security officer that my son had hoped to see it.

“Tomorrow is another day to see the Armenian flag,” he said.

I thought to myself: perhaps. But tomorrow is not promised – not for the flag, nor for the independent Armenia it represents. Its future depends on whether we are willing to meet the responsibilities before us today.

The Armenian flag must stand for more than survival or symbolism. It must represent a country that respects and protects its people, in Armenia and across the Diaspora; learns from its failures; preserves its history and identity; and gives its children reason to believe in the future.

That future is built through remembrance, principled leadership, disciplined institutions, courageous civic participation, and an unshakable commitment to the Armenian people – wherever they live and whatever they have endured.

On this Independence Day, we can recognize the miracle of an independent Armenia while refusing to look away from its wounds. We can honor the flag while demanding that it stand for a country worthy of the sacrifices made in its name. We can teach the next generation that  remembering who we are, protecting what remains, and building what comes next are the cornerstones of Armenian survival.

(Taleen Babayan is an Armenian-American author, journalist, filmmaker, and cultural educator. She is the author of A Is for Armenia, an alphabet board book. Her forthcoming book, A Is for Artsakh, introduces young readers to Artsakh through its people, places, sites, and symbols. Visit hyekidsclub.com to learn more.)