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YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have signed a memorandum of understanding with the purpose of improving and developing the social housing policy in Armenia.
The sides will unite efforts for the continuous development of the social housing stock and its management.
A pilot program envisaged in the memorandum will apply the positive experience of Bosnia and Herzegovina by localizing the successful self-sustainable model of ensuring social housing.
“We have been outsourcing a huge part of services to our partners in NGOs. The cooperation has further intensified in the post-war period and after the 2023 forced displacement of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, because generally in crisis situations governments work more effectively when on one hand there’s support from the private sector and on the other hand international partners, especially while trying to introduce the best experience. In this regard we attach importance to the experience of Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially this agreement of ours on cooperation with the Catholic Relief Services,” Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Narek Mkrtchyan said, expressing hope that the memorandum will launch a more comprehensive cooperation in social protection sector.
CRS Country Representative for the Balkans and Outreach Countries Sanela Imamovic said the inception of the idea happened in 2023 when the Nagorno-Karabakh refugees were arriving to Armenia, and the CRS wanted to share their experience in social housing stock of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The signing of the memorandum once again underscored the CRS commitment to support the Armenian government in the direction of creating and maintaining social housing stock, Imamovic said.
“We will support the Armenian government also through reproducing the European standard on the path of revising the existing legislation, we will improve the legislation and the capacity to implement this work, we will cooperate with communities, NGOs, in order for the government to develop capacity to involve greater resources in the direction of this social initiative,” she said.