An Interview with Tim Straight
Country Director, Norwegian Refugee Council and Honorary Norwegian Consul to Armenia

OK: Not in Yerevan.

TS: Not in Yerevan, if you're out in the villages, but it becomes a question of the quality or number of the jobs created, that's the issue. I wouldn't be as adamant in saying that it's as unacceptable as you are.

OK: But what about some form of profit share so that a start-up business can avoid large overheads in terms of salaries in order to get started but if its does well, that's reflected in top-ups to a basic salary. That would also encourage better workmanship.

TS: And I agree with you but I don't think that that's going to happen anytime soon. Incidentally, I know a guy who wants to start up an IT center in Armenia but wants to hire only women. Even though everybody knows that women are better students than men, they're coming out of the universities and getting the IT jobs last. Anyway, this guy isn't thinking along these lines because he believes in women's rights but because he understands that he'd be getting the best employees. As a result, he's going to pay them $150-200 a month because that's what they're worth. Promoting women's rights is fine but that's not why he's doing it, he's doing it because they're good.

Now that's what I believe in and that's the way it should be done in my opinion. Yes, I also look forward to the day when nobody will take that job for $50 a month because they can take another that pays $75-150 and I have to admit that we've already discussed this regarding the shop on Amirian Street. However, that's because we're from the west. I still wouldn't say that it's unacceptable to pay $50 a month. It's not a huge salary but if the working conditions are decent...

I mean, there are many people on zero dollars a month in this country and I'm surprised at the number of 12-hour shifts being worked. I'm a lot more upset with a cafe owner who doesn't pay his waitresses a proper salary, for example, and expects them to live off their tips instead. That's a lot worse than offering $50 a month. It's not a perfect situation but we've got to start somewhere. We can't just come in and install the Norwegian social justice system overnight.


OK: You've just mentioned people living on very little here and as we all know, there's now a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). Are refugees included in that and have you had some involvement in the preparation of the PRSP?

TS: Yes, and again, jointly with UNHCR. They lead the charge on that and there are a significant number of pages on refugees. The result is the meeting I had today with the Minister of Urban Development, the head of the World Bank and other international organizations. The need to have a national housing strategy for vulnerable families in Armenia has already been identified and has been in the works for a while.

In the beginning, they wanted to implement a refugee program but both UNHCR and the NRC said that we couldn't isolate the refugees from other vulnerable groups in Armenia because there are locals who are living just as badly. The result is that 13,150 families have been identified by the government as being particularly vulnerable.

We're going to start working on the terms of reference and concept papers. The World Bank, UNHCR and UNDP are interested and so are we. This is the result of the PRSP identifying the need for socially vulnerable groups to be mapped out and the problem addressed. It's all of these big fluffy things and fancy reports that are now turning into something concrete.

About $5.6 million of Government money funneled through the Department of Migration and Refugees will be spent on refugee and vulnerable group housing issues by the end of 2006 so it's starting to move.


OK: Are refugees considered one of the most vulnerable groups in Armenia?

TS: Yes, and if I can give my spiel. After four years working in Armenia I can say that there are two big problems that need to be addressed. I mentioned earlier that the neat little pockets of refugees in containers are drying up because we're addressing those. The big issue for the future is the urban collective centers and what to do with them. We've been doing a great job in what we're doing but have taken the easy route by not addressing that need.


OK: Wasn't that... isn't that part of UNHCR's remit?

TS: Yes, it is part of UNHCR's work but their capacity alone isn't enough to address the problem.


OK: So are you saying that the lion's share of refugees are living in urban collective centers?

TS: No. The lion's share of refugees in dire need of housing -- the most vulnerable -- are living in urban centers.


OK: That's not just Yerevan, that's also Goris...

TS: Yes, and Ararat, Artashat as well as other places and I had a meeting today with UNHCR to try to look at a new model. The twelve square meter rooms in these collective centers are not sustainable. Even if you give them a new toilet down the hall or a shiny new roof it's not enough. We have to get them out of these buildings and into normal apartments.

That's what UNHCR has been doing but more still needs to be done. UNHCR has been using half-finished buildings given by the government or whoever but those are drying up as a resource. As a result, for the first time today we examined the possibility of constructing new apartment buildings instead. However, we need to look at the cost efficiency first.

Then, the other burning question is the elderly refugees. What do we do about them?

In every one of our projects we have a little old lady who isn't able to get out of bed anymore. My own headquarters has said that I may not work on this issue because, from a point of view that I don't quite buy, they're saying that this should be taken care of by the government. However, I'd be happy to help find a donor for a local NGO. Mission Armenia, for example, is trying to find funding to work on this issue.

OK: It's worth pointing out for those that don't already know, Mission Armenia is a local NGO that has a very good reputation and is already working with elderly refugees.

TS: They have a very good reputation and they also have a home visit program which is excellent but I'm talking about those groups that are so bad that they can't get out of bed. They need to be moved to an assisted living situation where they have a room of their own as well as a bathroom and even a place to cook if they're able to use it. They need a little bell to ring if they require assistance getting out of bed or getting to the toilet, their medicines or whatever.

In Banavan, we have a little old lady who just stays in bed and the refugee kids in this filthy collective center go out to buy her vegetables. We've had huge discussions about taking that woman and putting her in an assisted-living environment in Yerevan until she dies but it's taking her out of her social environment.

What's the best solution for her? To die in a mess that is at least the social environment she knows or to put her in an assisted living situation in Yerevan that is clean?

OK: When you speak about an assisted-living environment, what you're actually describing is an old age pensioner's home?

TS: It's an old age home to use the rude term but I think that what I liked about Mission Armenia's model was that there would be a community center on the first floor for the whole neighborhood. These elderly refugees could be brought down to the first floor to eat and to also interact with other people. There needs to be a network around these people.

This is what I would like to find a donor for, and if a Diasporan wants to help with that it would be great. I just want this issue addressed and would gladly plug them straight into Mission Armenia. They even have a building and the money for the community center. When they designed their building up in Zeytoun they built the foundations so that they can build four more floors if a donor comes along. Mission Armenia is doing a fantastic job.


OK: What are living conditions like for refugees in general? I'm sure that there are quite a few refugees with sons working in Russia and there's this idea that families with relatives overseas are actually living very good lives and not deserving of any assistance. They're scrounging, basically, and living above the poverty line.

TS: That's not anything I would support. There's no question that many refugees as well as locals have relatives in Russia but our experience is that they don't get the money that everybody thinks they do. Besides, even if they do receive money from abroad, it's only $10-15 a month.

There's a sign on Sayat-Nova for a bank saying that they charge a minimum amount for receiving transfers from abroad so there's no question that money is coming in but how much it actually is and how it's shared around? Anyway, I've heard quite a few stories about husbands who have left for Russia and just dumped their wives and families in Armenia.


OK: This is another one of the most vulnerable groups identified in the PRSP, single-parent households.

TS: Well, in the World Food Program survey held a few years ago, there were four groups of vulnerable persons. One was handicapped people, another was refugees, then single female-headed households and the fourth was those families with chronically ill members. Then you say, refugees are included as one category but in fact, we can also say that they are generally single-parent households and so on.

There was Ivan, a refugee with chronically untreated diabetes who was about to die until we got him help and then we had a woman who lost her baby because she ate badly during her pregnancy. She lived in a container which is cold in the winter and hot in the summer and didn't have any money. She had the baby delivered at home and it died on the first day.

Then you have the local family that was renting a container just ten meters up the street from this refugee and they lost their baby at sixty days. And then you have the house across the street where a 10 year old boy, Ararat, died of chronic lung disease after his family received a house from us. They had four children and he died because he was born and raised in a container.

This is twenty square meters we're talking about -- this house, this house and this house.

It's tough. The miracle of 14% economic growth last year in Armenia, that's a Yerevan thing and actually, only certain groups in Yerevan. Yes, there's now a lot of Mercedes on the streets and yes, I now have to sit in my car waiting at two red lights instead of one and that's great, but this economic growth is not reaching our target group.

But then, on the other hand, you have to turn that around. Every once in a while we stumble across a refugee who's made a good life for themselves. Up in Bagratashen, for example, we built fourteen houses and the electricity and water being supplied to the contractor was coming from an adjacent house. I asked the contractor if he had entered into an agreement with the owner but he said the water and electricity was being donated because the owner was also a refugee.

And it’s a beautiful house with climbing rose bushes and he's one of those rare examples of a refugee who made a life for himself. He buys and sells this or that at the market in Sadakhlo and he's made good. You'd never know he was a refugee by looking at him.

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