ANCA calls on Congress to investigate Biden administration’s aid blockade on Artsakh
Posted on August. 26. 2022
WASHINGTON, DC – In letters sent this week to Congressional leadership and rank and file members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Chairman Raffi Hamparian called for Congressional inquiries into the Biden Administration’s effective blockade on humanitarian aid to Armenian families of Artsakh – an at-risk population facing aggression, ethnic-cleansing, the obstruction of access to food, water, fuel, and other vitally needed resources.
Citing the “Azerbaijani government’s ambition to see Artsakh’s Armenians starved out of existence,” Hamparian underscored that “the Administration has sent almost no humanitarian assistance at all to help Armenian families living in Artsakh.” “America must not be complicit in the ethnic-cleansing of Artsakh by Azerbaijan,” he stressed.
The ANCA letter called on legislators to demand answers from the Biden Administration – via Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power – to the following four questions:
— What specific actions has the Biden Administration taken to help at-risk Armenians living within Nagorno-Karabakh? (Please provide programs, partners, budgets, deliverables and other relevant information.)
— What specific plans does the Biden Administration have to help at-risk Armenians living within Nagorno-Karabakh? (Please provide programs, partners, budgets, deliverables and other relevant information.)
— Has the Biden Administration conducted a needs assessment of the humanitarian crisis facing the Armenian population of Artsakh?
— What budget range does the Biden Administration consider sufficient and appropriate to address the humanitarian crisis facing the Armenian population of Artsakh?
ANCA activists across the United States have sent tens of thousands of letters asking their U.S. legislators to appropriate robust U.S. aid to Artsakh, using the ANCA action portal: www.anca.org/aid.