Pashinyan says Armenia is seeing growing repatriation trends

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Wednesday hosted participants of iGorts, the Diaspora fellowship program that invites professionals to work in Armenia’s public sector.

During the meeting, the prime minister noted that Armenia has recently been witnessing certain repatriation and immigration trends, according to a readout.

In 2025, the number of Armenian citizens who returned to Armenia exceeded the number of citizens who left the country by more than 8,000. Pashinyan highlighted that people are returning to Armenia, purchasing real estate, making investments and seeking to build their lives in Armenia. “Unlike in 2014 and even in 2019-2020, repatriation trends are becoming more pronounced today, including thanks to the peace agenda and established peace, because this is also a factor that we must certainly take into account,” Pashinyan said.

The prime minister said that the iGorts program is part of this process and expressed hope that it would become a more practical and reliable mechanism for returning to Armenia.

Commenting on his recent decision to involve graduates of the world's top 200 universities in Armenia’s public administration system, Pashinyan said he had already made several appointments and that more appointments are expected in the near future. The prime minister said that some of the appointees first became aware of the opportunity to work in Armenia’s public administration system through the iGorts program.

“We are now increasingly focused on our understanding of the present and future of the Republic of Armenia, which we have formulated through the ideology of Real Armenia. If we were to formulate this ideology in one sentence, it is about the fact that the meaning and significance of the existence of the Republic of Armenia as a state is to ensure the security and well-being of its citizens, their freedom, and the preservation and development of their identity within the internationally recognized territory of the Republic of Armenia,” the prime minister said.

Pashinyan said that ideas and ideologies in Armenia have traditionally been formulated by elites and imposed on society and the people. He said that the ideology of Real Armenia was formulated as a result of the transition from that ideology and was also implemented rapidly. “I am now convinced that the immigration process will be institutionalized, because today Armenia is governed according to a logic and ideology that was not imposed on the people by elites, but imposed on the governing force by the people. Therefore, I believe this is a new situation in our history that opens up limitless horizons for our state,” the prime minister said, emphasizing the importance and necessity of moving forward with the opportunities these horizons provide.

In this context, Pashinyan added that these valuable repatriation processes are not accidental. “I hope that, including by reformatting relations between Armenia and the Diaspora, we will also be able to develop this logic and truly make Armenia a state that develops and whose population grows primarily through repatriation and, of course, through the implementation of the demographic strategy. The human potential that will be involved in implementing this plan and strategy has a very important role here. The iGorts program is a system for connecting with that potential and meeting these people, which I hope will become increasingly effective over time.”

Acting High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs Zareh Sinanyan thanked the prime minister for hosting the sixth group of program participants and presented details about the program. It was noted that 68–70% of participants from the previous five years have remained in Armenia, while 15% of them continue to work in the public sector.

There are 45 participants in the 2026 program. They have arrived from Sweden, Spain, Russia, Norway, Hungary, France, Jordan, Belarus, Brazil, Argentina, Iran and Austria.