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Recently, foreign diplomatic missions in Armenia have been displaying various approaches to issuing visas to Artsakh citizens.
Citizens affected by the decisions of some embassies shared their concerns in one of the Facebook groups. In particular, one of the users alerted on May 13 that the embassies do not issue a visa in the case of passports with Nagorno Karabakh (NK) issuing authority 070, demanding to change it and obtain citizenship of the Republic of Armenia. This alert was followed by others, when displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh shared the same problem on social media, emphasizing that until May, obtaining a Schengen visa with a passport code 070 was not considered an issue.
Human Rights Defender (HRD) of Nagorno-Karabakh Gegham Stepanyan, in response to the issue, stated: “Rejection of the application by a number of embassies to issue a visa to the citizens of Artsakh violates the provisions of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.”
Pursuant to that Convention, contracting states issue travel documents to refugees legally residing in their territory for the purpose of travel outside their territory, unless valid reasons arising from national security and the protection of public order require otherwise. In addition, contracting states may issue such a travel document to any other refugee in their territory.
On May 24, one of the users, Goga Baghdasaryan, told what happened to him, when, after the embassy’s rejection, the organization inviting to Germany applied to the German Embassy in Armenia, requesting to clarify the circumstances of not issuing a visa.
According to Baghdasaryan, the response provided by the embassy states:
“The Embassy regrets to inform you that it is currently not possible to visa passports with the issuing authority 070. Based on the information published on this subject by Armenian authorities, the Embassy currently assumes that a passport with the issuing authority 070 does not contain any proof that the passport holder also has Armenian citizenship. As long as the nationality is not clearly proven by the passport, it is not possible to accept or process the application.
It should be expressly pointed out at this point that it is not the opinion of the embassy that persons who have a passport with the issuing authority 070 are refugees, but that this is the official wording of the Armenian migration authorities.”
Pursuant to the decision of October 26, 2023 of the Government of the Republic of Armenia the Government of the Republic of Armenia takes the forcibly displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh under temporary protection. According to the same decision, the passport with issuing authority 070 and the certificate of temporary protection (refugee) constitute the identity documents of the refugee who received temporary protection.
On January 28, 2024, the Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that these two documents will be considered valid when leaving and entering the Republic of Armenia only if they are used together.
Fact Investigation Platform approached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia, trying to find out whether the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made any demands to the embassies operating in the Armenia to not issue visas to the citizens of Artsakh with passports with issuing authority 070.
The Foreign Ministry gave a negative response stating that they have never made any demand to not issue an visa to European countries in case of passports with issuing authority 070.
They also noted that the persons taken under temporary protection were recognized as refugees by virtue of Article 62, Part 1 of the Law of the Republic of Armenia “On Refugees and Asylum.”
However, the according to the decision No. 1864 of October 26, 2023 of the Government, passport 070 is also a valid travel document, so the non-acceptance of these passports by the embassies is not justified. “The issue of cases of rejection of entry visas by the embassies of some EU member states is currently under discussion with the relevant partners,” the RA MFA emphasized.
The US embassy in Armenia gave an almost identical response, “If the applicant meets the requirements for obtaining a visa, the US Embassy issues a visa by attaching it to a valid international travel document issued by the RA government. Having a passport with issuing authority 070 does not exclude obtaining a visa if the applicant meets the requirements for obtaining a visa.”
Following the concerns expressed by the citizens and the discussions that arose on social networks, some citizens wrote that the German Embassy has started to review its decision and accept the passports with the issuing authority 070.
However, diplomatic representations of a number of European countries in Armenia still refuse to accept these passports.
Thus, the diplomatic representations operating in Armenia display arbitrary approaches in granting visas to forcibly displaced persons from Nagorno Karabakh. The RA MFA claims that the RA government did not make any demands to the diplomatic representations to not issue an entry visa. Passports with issuing authority 070 are considered as international travel documents, and persons applying for a visa with these passports should not be required to have RA citizenship.
Arpine Hovhannisyan
