Sputnik News Service, Russia
 Tuesday 4:43 PM UTC


Armenia Granted Asylum to 22,000 Refugees From Syria - Foreign Minister



YEREVAN, October 24 (Sputnik) - Armenia has granted asylum to more
than 22,000 refugees from Syria since the beginning of the conflict in
that country, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said
Tuesday.

"From Syria alone Armenia has harbored about 22.000 refugees, on per
capita basis making our country the third largest recipient of Syrian
refugees in Europe," Nalbandian said at the 2017 OSCE Mediterranean
Conference on the refugee problems in Palermo, Italy.

This has caused a number of challenges for a country with a population
of just 3 million, which has already received hundreds of thousands of
refugees from Azerbaijan in the recent past, the minister noted.

The 110,000-strong Armenian community in Syria was considered one of
the most powerful diasporas before the beginning of the conflict in
the country. They mainly lived in Aleppo (60,000 people), Damascus
(7,000), Latakia, Kessab and Qamishli. After the outbreak of the
Syrian crisis, according to various estimates, more than 90,000
Armenians left Syria.

Syria has been engulfed in civil war since 2011, with millions of
people having to flee the country. According to the latest United
Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) data, a total of 5.16 million
people left Syria, with over a million of them being hosted in
Lebanon, some 600,000 in Jordan and more than three million in Turkey.