Three years, thrice displaced: A family flees Nagorno-Karabakh

Her 13-year-old daughter, Mane, was in school when explosions lit the sky of Karabakh on 19 September. That day, all the students were quickly sent home. Mileta knew they would never come back.  

With no phone or internet connection, Mileta had no idea what to do or where to go to find safety, so she and her family locked themselves inside their home, terrified. A few hours later, a neighbour entered the home and urged them to leave, saying that soldiers were already advancing toward their village. Not knowing what to take with them and what to leave behind, Mileta instinctively went for the family albums.  

“I knew I had to take the photos of my family to cherish the memories, as we have nothing else left anymore,” Mileta says. "We have been stripped of our lives, left with nothing.” 

On 19 September, Azerbaijan launched an attack on various areas in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that is a self-proclaimed republic internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but has traditionally been home to many ethnic Armenians. 

After a ceasefire agreement was reached 24 hours later, more than 100,000 people from the region fled to neighbouring Armenia. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Armenia have been providing aid, including mental health care, to displaced people like Mileta and her family.

Fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh

Before the war erupted, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh endured 10 months of blockade by Azerbaijan. During the last three months, it was becoming increasingly difficult to find food in totally isolated Karabakh, and Mileta's family ate only once each day. She says that pretty much every displaced person she met on the road had stomach problems from months of malnutrition.  

Mileta’s family managed to get to the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh from Martakert/Aghdara with the little gasoline they had. On the way, chaos erupted. There were rumors that civilians would be evacuated. Nobody knew whether the Lachin corridor connecting Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh would be open for them to flee.

The rumors turned out to be false. The vast majority of people ended up sleeping wherever they could while waiting for their next move. Mileta and her children slept in their car in Stepanakert/Khankendi, not knowing where to go or what to do. Finally, Azerbaijan opened Lachin corridor on 24 September, and Mileta’s family passed through to Armenia. 

The toll of displacement

Mileta recalls how hard her family worked to renovate their home in Martakert/Aghdara over the past few years. They dreamed of turning the ground floor into a dental clinic, so that when her son graduated from university, he could come back to their town and work as a dentist.

Her family does not know whether they will stay in Armenia, as they would have to start over from scratch. Stress, insomnia, and uncertainty have set in. Mileta still wonders whether they will ever be able to go back to their homeland.  

“Wherever I am, it is not home for me," says Mileta. "I left my father’s cemetery, the church where I used to pray, and my home, which our family built with our own hands."

MSF teams have seen a high number of psychosomatic issues among displaced people from Nagorno-Karabakh in the villages of Ararat and Kotayk. Many people we see have been displaced three or four times during the past year, and many continuously experience grief, bereavement, and a feeling of disempowerment. Adults predominantly express fear while in children, the accumulated anxiety has resulted in sleeping disorders and enuresis.  

Anxiety about the future is the dominant theme for almost every person that MSF teams have met and spoken to. “I have to start from zero, and my biggest burden is to take care of my kids,” says Anyuta, another displaced person from Nagorno-Karabakh. “The trauma we went through is unfathomable, after months of blockade and food scarcity. But now we have lost our home on top of it."

About MSF's response in Armenia

MSF teams are visiting vulnerable families in the Kotayk and Ararat regions of Armenia— including hotels and apartments where displaced people are temporarily living—to offer mental health support and assess the most critical social needs. Since October 2023, MSF has provided 1,655 mental health consultations and distributed more than 200 non-food item kits.