About us

Mission of the organization - to promote international cooperation aimed at support of democratic reforms in Armenia. At
present we organized discussions and round-tables for different groups of the Armenian society aimed at finding the best
ways for reforming the country.

Due to civil protests and mass marches in April-May, 2018 the representatives of the public movement “Elk” came to power
in Armenia. There were a lot of students of different Armenian Universities among those who were protesting in the streets.
The peculiarity of the new Armenian government is that many of the new heads of the country have never worked in the
state structures.
Nowadays, it is of high priority for them not to lose the support of and connections with Armenian citizens. In that case it is
important to develop new mechanism for the dialogue with the civil society without riots and protests. The dialogue that
leads to finding the best solutions for the improvements in the state economy destroying the corrupting schemes of the past.
It is important to highlight that previous authorities were not interested in strong NGOs. So it can be expected that the
change in power can stimulate different civic initiatives and establishment of new NGOs aimed at supporting democracy in
Armenia.

International Relations Development NGO was created just after the success of the velvet revolution in Armenia earlier this
year. It consists of the young activists that actively participated in street protests. They realized that there are a lot of new
possibilities for the youth participation in democratic changes in new Armenia. International Relations Development have
already conducted a number of seminars and a press-conference in Yerevan to discuss the ways of preserving the
interethnic peace in the country. The activists of International Relations Development
NGO actively participated in the organisation of RI-WEB training in Yerevan in 2015.
One of the last international events our organisation took part in was the co-organisation of the "Hug the Hague. Youth
involvement in democratic institutions" project. We were really pleased with the productive results of the project though the
world`s democracy really needs a fresh view of young generation so hard now.

The Organisation held a meeting with social media activists created by newcomers to Armenia from Russia In April INRED - ARMENIA held a meeting with activists of social networks created by Russiancitizens who came to Armenia in 2022. Sanctions in USA and European Union put a lot of people into a difficult situation: either to become unemployed or to move to another country where there are no such restrictions. Armenia has become a convenient country for moving from one place to another. Armenia has no visa regime with Russia. However, the publications in sosial network communities did not give a full picture of how Russians feel about their arrival. The aim of our meeting was to find activists and activists in the Armenian society. The aim of our meeting was to find activists from these groups and persuade them to come to our meeting. As it turned out, this was no easy task. Nevertheless, around twenty young people, citizens of Russia, turned up at our meeting held in the cosy Café Armat in the centre of Yerevan. As itturnedout, these were programmers,
environmentalists, bloggers. We got to know each other, tasted delicious Armenian sweets with a cup of coffee and discussed how they live in Armenia, what they like and what they don't.

As it turned out, our guests liked Armenia and did not have any major problems in our country. Some said it would be good to organize free courses in the Armenian language, some talked about rubbish, which is somewhere over there and spoils the city. As it turned out, newcomers from Russia have already held a number of subbotniks for rubbish collection, causing
surprise among locals. There wereproblems with renting accommodation. Families with children had problems getting medical care.

We told them that ideally we should create a group of activists who could identify the main challenges that newcomers from Russia faced, and cooperate with the authorities, non-profit organisations and business structures to solve these problems. As a result, we decided to organise a couple more meetings like this and think about what we can do next to help integrate our guests from Russia. The Investment Support Centre of the Republic of Armenia (https://eenarmenia.am/en/) in cooperation with the Armenian Public Centre for International Cooperation, Republican Union of Employers of Armenia and the Information System for Supporting Entrepreneurs in Armenia, held a roundtable on May 27 2022 at the Ministry of Economy of Armenia with the immigrant russian opinion leaders. Employees of the Investment Support Centre made a presentation of the cooperating possibilities. Ashot Grigoryan, Head of the Information System for Supporting Entrepreneurs in Armenia, told how their system can help Russian citizens to find organizations and services in Armenia. As a result - the participants of the meeting exchanged their experience and agreed on continuing the discussions.