Noubar Afeyan, initiator of the Future Armenia movement, co-founder of the Aurora humanitarian initiative, is concerned that after the 44-day war, Armenia-Diaspora cooperation is not as important as before. He said this at the panel discussion organized within the framework of the Future Armenian conference. According to Nubar Afeyan, he was born in the diaspora, lived in Lebanon, Canada, and now lives in the USA. “During the past 22 years, I have been involved in the development projects of Armenia. I come to Armenia 5-6 times every year. During all that time, I always thought that Diaspora-Armenia relations are generally good and will improve. For some reasons, concerns have arisen in the last 1-2 years. All those steps we’ve taken over the years to better collaborate have all but disappeared. Much more serious problems arose in front of Armenia: war, pandemic, and in that case, cooperation is much more important, it has become much less important than before.”
According to Noubar Afeyan, Armenians living in different corners of the world have this concern. He sees a number of problems facing Armenia today. “The present forces the figures to work endlessly on the present. Diaspora Armenians can work on the future, because they cannot have so much influence on the present. It can help with money, investments, but you have to be here to work on the present, but to work on the future, you can be in Los Angeles or wherever you want, and you can express your dreams and make them come true during some years,” said Mr. Afeyan.
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According to him, long-term plans should be more interesting for Diaspora Armenians. “If we find a way for Armenia and the diaspora to create bridges, to connect the diaspora from the future and the present from Armenia’s side, I think it will be a new model.” He proposes a new model of Armenia-Diaspora cooperation: the officials in Armenia should work in the direction of the present, and the diaspora should work in the direction of the future, that is, long-term plans. According to Nubar Afeyan, for years he participated in various Diaspora-Armenia forums, he heard the idea that Azerbaijan has oil, Armenia has its Diaspora, its “oil.”
“The Diaspora may be oil, but if we cannot extract oil from the ground and use it, it will remain just a dream. We should be able to find each other through conversation, understand, respect, and express longing, so that we can move forward,” he said. According to Noubar Afeyan, one of the 10 most important goals should be that thousands of professionals, tens of thousands of students come here and invest their talent and potential in building the future of Armenia and Artsakh. Diaspora Armenians have no right to despair at all. But it has the right to be much more demanding, so that our investment and our time have much more impact. “As a Diaspora Armenian, I can say that we live in much easier, much better conditions, if we are going to invest our efforts in the future of Armenia, we must first of all say that we have no right to despair,” said Noubar Afeyan.
Lusine BUDAGHYAN
