The Artsakh Family Integration Fund (AFIF)

The Nagorno-Karabakh war is an ethnic, religious, and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Artsakh, an Armenian enclave situated within Azerbaijan. The dispute escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s. A ceasefire signed in 1994 provided for two decades of relative stability, but escalations in April 2016, and most recently in September 2020, renewed the antagonism. Total casualties stemming from the fall 2020 war are in the thousands. On November 9, 2020, Armenia’s Prime Minister signed an agreement whereby Azerbaijan retained control of land in Artsakh it had captured, and Armenia agreed to relinquish adjacent land in these now Azeri-occupied areas. In September 2022, Azeri forced attacked civilian populations, forcing a complete surrender of Artsakh. Evacuation of 120,000 Armenians began shortly thereafter.

SOAR established the Artsakh Family Integration Fund (AFIF) in November 2021 to assure that no children in Artsakh would ever have to be institutionalized because of the casualties of war. Central to the aims of post-war social reconstruction was the desire to empower Armenian families after the disruptive effects of war and to build a future in which cultural identity, family stability, and economic independence would be the foundation of a better life. To those families from Artsakh relocating to Armenia, SOAR provides emotional and financial support with the ultimate goals of cultural preservation and economic self-sufficiency.