Karabakh refugees in Armenia face uncertainty and poverty in exile
For the third time in her life, Elada Sargsyan is a refugee. Born in the Azerbaijani capital Baku, Sargsyan fled her hometown in 1988, aged 19, as the Soviet Union began to fall apart. The city’s once-large Armenian minority were driven out in violence triggered by the outbreak of ethnic conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, an autonomous, primarily Armenian Christian territory within the mostly Muslim Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, which was soon to become an independent country.