Bring hope to forgotten conflicts
4 June 2026
There are some places that stay with you.
Nagorno Karabakh is one of them.
I visited the region before it was sealed off from the outside world in 2023. What struck me most was not the conflict. It was the life.
Nagorno Karabakh was vibrant.
You could feel it in the villages, in the churches, in the warmth of the hospitality. It was there in the unique dialect, family traditions, folk music, and the pride people took in their history and culture. They were deeply connected to the land.
That connection matters because when we talk about Nagorno Karabakh today, we often focus on geopolitics – borders, diplomacy, international law.
All important.
But there is another story that receives much less attention. It is the story of what happens when an ancient community is uprooted from the place that shaped it.
More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled Nagorno Karabakh in September 2023. The exodus was so sudden, so complete, that an ancient community disappeared from its homeland in a matter of days.
For a brief moment, the world paid attention.
Then the headlines moved on.
But the consequences are still being felt every day.
Over the past three years, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART) has continued supporting displaced families from Nagorno Karabakh. They are safe from immediate danger. But safety is not the same as home.
Again and again, I hear people talk about what they miss. Not just their houses. Their way of life.
The region’s former Culture Minister Lernik Hovhannisyan said something to me that captures this perfectly. Homeland is not simply territory. He said, “it’s the place where language, customs, faith and community come together as a living whole.”
That is what many people have lost.
When people are forced from their homeland, they do not only leave behind buildings. They leave behind routines, relationships, sacred places and shared memories. They lose the environment in which culture is naturally passed from one generation to the next.
This is why the tragedy of Nagorno Karabakh cannot be measured solely in physical destruction.
Of course, the destruction matters.
Reports continue to emerge of churches being damaged, cemeteries destroyed and monuments removed or altered. Historic traces of Armenian life are disappearing from the landscape.
The destruction of a cemetery is not simply the destruction of stone. It is an attack on memory.
The flattening of a church is not simply a change to the landscape. It is an attempt to weaken a community’s connection to its history.
The world tends to think of cultural heritage as something static – monuments, museums, ancient artefacts.
But culture is alive.
It is found in language, in songs, in family traditions and local customs. It exists around dinner tables and in places of worship. It is carried by people.
That is why displacement poses such a profound challenge.
What happens when a distinctive dialect is no longer spoken in the place where it evolved? What happens when children grow up far from the villages that shaped their parents and grandparents? What happens when traditions become memories rather than everyday realities?
These are not theoretical questions.
They are questions being lived by thousands of families right now.
The Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh has long referred to the region as ‘Artsakh’. For them, the name carries history, identity and belonging. It speaks to a relationship with the land that cannot easily be replicated elsewhere.
I’m told often that local sacred sites are irreplaceable. No church elsewhere can fully replace the spiritual significance of the churches and monasteries that formed part of people’s lives for generations.
The more time I spend with displaced families, the more I realise that what has been lost cannot be measured simply in physical terms.
This is not only a humanitarian crisis.
It is also a cultural one.
There is a danger that the world sees the displacement of Nagorno Karabakh’s Armenians as a settled issue. Something that happened. Something to move on from.
It is not.
The future of this community is still being written.
That is why the question of ‘Return’ matters so much.
The Right to Return is often discussed in political terms. It is also a cultural question. Because a culture can survive on memory for only so long. For a living heritage to flourish, people need more than stories about the places they came from. They need a future connected to those places too.
This is one of the great forgotten tragedies of our time.
The people of Nagorno Karabakh have not disappeared. Their culture has not disappeared. Their connection to their homeland has not disappeared.
But none of these things can be taken for granted.
If we genuinely care about preserving the heritage of Nagorno Karabakh, we must care about the people who created it, sustained it and carried it forward through generations.
Because ultimately, the story of Nagorno Karabakh is not about monuments.
It is about people.
We must not allow the spirit of Artsakh to fade.
By Sam Mason, Chief Executive of Humanitairan Aid Releif Trust (HART) and Goodwill Ambassador for the Artsakh Union