For many years the social policy conducted in Karabakh was based on the idea of humanitarian aid. Now the state has decided to carry out a new policy – aid is provided in a targeted way so that people start to believe in their own possibilities.

Humanitarian aid was what helped post-war Karabakh with its destroyed populated areas, people who had lost everything to survive. No statistical service can now estimate the total amount of aid rendered to Karabakh by the Diaspora, but one thing is clear – it was a salvation for Karabakh.

As economic rehabilitation began in the country, the state tried to conduct a more targeted social policy. However, it turned out that the syndrome of humanitarian aid was an obstacle. People who had got accustomed to receiving aid continued to pin their hopes on the state and even whenever they could they preferred not to repair their own houses considering that it was something that “others” ought to do.

Now the so-called “aid syndrome” has been overcome on the whole. However, there are still categories of people in Karabakh who are not capable of existing independently. They rely on the state to assist them.

As of January 1, 2008, 34,585 pensions are registered in the republic, of whom 10,207 are disabled people. The population of Karabakh is about 140,000.

Among pensioners are both people who receive pension due to their age and social categories begotten by the war, such as the families of perished soldiers, missing persons, disabled war veterans.

The state pays them a certain pension. For instance, the pension for one child of a slain soldier is 30,000 drams (or about $95). It is approximately equal to the minimum living wage. But that’s not all.

On May 8, on the eve of the celebration of the anniversary of the Shushi liberation, eight first-category disabled people were provided with cars equipped with hand control systems purchased at the expense of state funds. As Karabakh’s Social Welfare Minister Narine Azatyan said, it is envisaged that all first-category disabled veterans of the Karabakh war would be provided with cars.

The men to whom the state gave hand-controlled cars a month ago already bring money to their homes. They now make their living as cab drivers. Their families say that they had changed beyond recognition within a matter of several days – their desperation giving way to confidence and a sense of self-respect.

The idea belongs to Minister Azatyan. She thinks that Karabakh should long ago have relinquished the practice of untargeted humanitarian aid and started concrete programs that would have concrete addressees. The concept is to expose the categories and separate people needing social assistance most. And the most vulnerable strata are children, elderly people and disabled.

It was they who were enrolled first in the list of social aid. Structural and personnel changes in the social spheres began from the boarding school (former Zangak kindergarten).

The boarding school is a former center of the Zangak NGO working for disabled children reorganized into a state non-commercial organization. This place is home mainly for children left without parental care as well as children under 18 from socially vulnerable families. The boarding school has 37 children aged 3-16. Because of social vulnerability some parents are not able to raise their children and some are deprived of parental rights.

The Ministry provided the boarding school with a refrigerator, a deep freezer, a gas stove, an electric mincing machine for its kitchen.

A program of integration of disabled people is also under elaboration. It envisages measures to provide disabled people with a possibility to earn their living and not to rely on humanitarian aid. For example, there is an idea about purchasing computers with a special keyboard for blind people. Computers may become a good means to earn money also for people with limited mobility for whom, as the minister thinks, the state could provide employment.

First-category disabled Irina Sahakyan recently received a computer as a gift. She cannot walk, but she can do any work on the computer. She wants to earn her living herself. And she was given a job at the republican Azat Artsakh newspaper. “Life has acquired sense for me,” Sahakyan told ArmeniaNow.

Housing is the biggest problem for a majority of people from vulnerable categories in Karabakh. So far, the state has built one or two multi-apartment residential houses a year and provided them accordingly to those standing at the head of a queue for state housing that originated over many years. Now the municipality of Karabakh’s capital Stepanakert has decided to provide apartments only to a queue of people enjoying certain privileges.

The family of Shmavon Hovhannisyan lives in their house in the village of Moshkhmahat of the Askeran region. “We live in this village since the beginning of the Karabakh war. We create means for living ourselves, with our sweat and blood. We keep livestock, cultivate land and are not going to leave this place. We have everything except for a house. We have applied to different instances many times, but we have not been able to solve the problem,” Shmavon Hovhannisyan says. “I am not complaining, simply I ask for the state to help us with the construction of a house.”

For the first time in the post-war period Karabakh’s Ministry of Social Welfare has published a book in which it in detail presents charity programs – for the reconstruction of the building of a boarding house in the town of Shushi for children ($2 million 97 thousand), for providing full orphans with housing and house property ($435,500), for the construction of a spa-recreational center in the town of Shushi for separate groups of the population ($3 million) and many others.