YEREVAN, JANUARY 29, ARMENPRESS. The Office of the High Commissioner of Diaspora Affairs has developed the 2023-2033 Armenia-Diaspora Partnership Strategy, High Commissioner Zareh Sinanyan told Armenpress.

He said the strategy is based on a vision of a “state-centered, pro-state” Diaspora. The document has been put into circulation.

“We expect to work with the Diaspora based on principles of respect, based on the objective of further deepening the ideology of statehood-building and state-centeredness. Today, this is very weak in the Diaspora. Understandably, the Diaspora was formed in conditions of absence of statehood,” Sinanyan explained, adding that while Armenians living in Armenia have the sense of nationhood and statehood-building, Diaspora Armenians don’t necessarily have that notion. “The work we want to do with the Diaspora must be exclusively centered on the state. Not because we are egoists or focused on ourselves, but because we see the state as the guarantee of perpetuity of not only the Armenians of Armenia, but of the Armenian nation and the Diaspora. Without a strong state there can be nothing. If the Diaspora was able to exist in the Middle East for many years, then the Diaspora that was formed in the past fifty years cannot exist for long without an anchor, and that anchor is the state,” Sinanyan said.

The High Commissioner said they have already received numerous recommendations and offers regarding the strategy and they are amending the document. Sinanyan’s office is working with the Diaspora regarding the strategy. He said that the strategy’s inception was in 2022 during the First Global Diaspora Summit in Armenia. “We are trying to realistically involve many representatives from the Diaspora,” Sinanyan said.

The 2nd Global Diaspora Summit is planned for mid-September 2024 in Armenia.

The 2023-2033 Armenia-Diaspora Partnership Strategy will be forwarded to the Cabinet for discussions in the coming months.

The agenda of the 2^nd summit is currently under development, but it will feature security, economic and cultural issues.