Repatriation and Integration Center

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A comprehensive one-stop resource center providing individualized case management across eleven support domains to Diaspora Armenians, enabling returning entrepreneurs to establish businesses and integrate into Armenia's economy.
What are the main aims and objectives?

The Repatriation and Integration Center aims to promote repatriation among Diaspora Armenians while ensuring smooth economic and social integration into Armenian society, with particular emphasis on enabling returnees to establish and grow businesses in Armenia. The Center addresses a fundamental challenge facing diaspora entrepreneurs considering return: the simultaneous need to navigate complex bureaucratic systems spanning business registration, taxation, customs, banking, housing, and employment while launching or relocating a venture. By consolidating repatriation assistance into a single institutional location with dedicated case managers, the Center seeks to reduce the administrative friction and uncertainty that might otherwise deter diaspora entrepreneurs from committing capital, expertise, and energy to Armenia-based enterprise development. The program recognizes that diaspora entrepreneurs bring internationally acquired skills, business networks, capital, and market knowledge that are valuable to Armenia's economic development, and that converting this potential into active contribution requires deliberate institutional support rather than assuming returnees can navigate complex bureaucratic systems independently. Beyond supporting individual returnees, the Center serves national objectives of reversing brain drain, building human capital, and attracting diaspora-led investment and entrepreneurship that strengthens Armenia's technology and innovation sectors.

How does the program work?

The Repatriation and Integration Center operates through an individualized case management model where each repatriate or repatriate family, including diaspora entrepreneurs relocating businesses or launching new ventures, is assigned a dedicated Integration Support Specialist who serves as their primary point of contact throughout the entire repatriation process. Diaspora Armenians who are planning, considering, or actively pursuing repatriation can contact the Center to initiate services, regardless of whether they are at an early exploratory stage or already committed to returning.

For diaspora entrepreneurs specifically, the eleven support domains the Center covers include several directly relevant to starting and running a business in Armenia. These include customs and tax registration procedures for importing business equipment and personal belongings, business licensing and registration processes across relevant government agencies, banking and financial services setup including opening corporate accounts and accessing credit, work permit processing for any non-Armenian team members the entrepreneur may bring, and employment facilitation for local hires through the Center's job fairs and professional networking events. Alongside these business-specific domains, the Center supports returnees through citizenship and residency permit applications, healthcare enrollment, education system navigation for families, social service access, housing identification, and Armenian language instruction, recognizing that successful entrepreneurial reintegration depends on stable personal circumstances as much as business infrastructure.

The Center accommodates linguistic diversity within the Armenian diaspora by delivering services in Eastern Armenian, Western Armenian, English, and Russian. This reflects the reality that many diaspora entrepreneurs operating businesses in North America, Europe, or the Middle East may have limited proficiency in Armenian and require English or Russian-language business and legal guidance during transition.​

The Center organizes regular job fairs and professional networking events in collaboration with Repat Armenia, connecting returning entrepreneurs to potential employees, business partners, and local investors within Armenia's growing startup ecosystem. A ten-session awareness and integration orientation course provides practical knowledge of operating conditions in Armenia, regulatory environments, and available support resources for entrepreneurs. Free Eastern Armenian language classes support diaspora founders seeking to strengthen their ability to operate in the local market.

The Center operates from 37 Hanrapetutyan Street in Yerevan, a renovated historic building shared with Repat Armenia and Birthright Armenia, creating a diaspora services and entrepreneurship hub where returnees can access multiple complementary programs in one location. Virtual forums and online events extend reach to diaspora entrepreneurs still abroad and planning their return.

What is the overall cost?

There is no information about the overall cost of running the Center. 

How was it implemented?

The Repatriation and Integration Center was established within Armenia's broader institutional framework for diaspora engagement. The Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs, the government body overseeing diaspora relations, was created by Prime Minister decree on June 11, 2019 as part of systematic reforms to strengthen Armenia's connection with its global diaspora and leverage diaspora talent for national development. One of the Office's nine strategic directions explicitly mandates promoting repatriation and ensuring smooth integration, providing the institutional foundation for the Center's creation.​

The Center was inaugurated on July 27, 2023 with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan attending the opening ceremony, signaling strong political commitment to diaspora entrepreneurship and repatriation at the highest level of government. The historic building housing the Center at 37 Hanrapetutyan Street underwent full renovation to create purpose-designed facilities suitable for professional business advisory and case management services.

Implementation drew on strategic partnerships that multiplied program capacity without equivalent increases in government expenditure. The H. Hovnanian Family Foundation's provision of free facility space reduced infrastructure costs significantly. Co-location with Repat Armenia, which contributed established employer networks and employment facilitation expertise, enhanced the Center's ability to connect returning entrepreneurs to business opportunities and potential hires. Birthright Armenia's presence in the same building extended the range of diaspora engagement programs accessible to returnees.

Staffing the Center required recruiting Integration Support Specialists with competencies spanning multiple regulatory and administrative domains relevant to both personal relocation and business establishment. Specialists needed language proficiency across diaspora languages and cultural competency to advise entrepreneurs arriving from diverse geographic contexts, business environments, and levels of familiarity with Armenian commercial and regulatory systems.​

The Center maintains active inter-agency coordination with ministries and agencies whose processes entrepreneurs must navigate, including tax authorities for business registration, the banking sector for financial services, and the Ministry of Health for healthcare access, ensuring Specialists hold current knowledge of relevant processes.

What impact has been measured?

Quantitative impact data on the number of diaspora entrepreneurs supported, businesses registered, capital invested, or jobs created by Center beneficiaries has not been publicly disclosed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs.

What lessons can be learned?

Key limitations and observations:

  • No published entrepreneur-specific outcomes: The Center's services are broadly applicable to all returnees, yet no data has been published disaggregating outcomes for entrepreneurs specifically, such as businesses registered, investment attracted, or ventures still operating after one or two years, limiting ability to assess the program's value as an entrepreneurship policy instrument.​
  • Single Yerevan location constrains reach: The Center operates from one physical address in the capital, which may be sufficient for entrepreneurs relocating to Yerevan's growing tech hub, but creates access barriers for diaspora entrepreneurs considering opportunities in Armenia's regions, where agricultural, tourism, and manufacturing ventures may be more viable.​
  • Business registration support not formally codified: Available documentation lists customs, tax, banking, and licensing as support domains, but does not specify whether the Center has formal relationships with the State Registry or the Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Development National Centre that would enable streamlined business setup, a gap that could reduce the speed and certainty returnee entrepreneurs experience during establishment.​
  • No follow-on support for established businesses: The Center's mandate focuses on the repatriation and initial integration phase, but no evidence exists of structured follow-on programming supporting diaspora-founded businesses through their first one to three years of operation, when survival rates are typically lowest.
  • Funding opacity limits replicability: Without published operational budget data, governments and development agencies in other countries seeking to adopt the one-stop center model lack the financial planning information necessary to assess feasibility, budget appropriately, and design comparable facilities.

Successful elements worth replicating:

  • One-stop model reduces entrepreneurial friction: Bringing citizenship, business licensing, customs, taxation, banking, housing, and employment services under a single institutional roof with one point of contact addresses the compound barriers that simultaneously confront returnee entrepreneurs, which fragmented agency-by-agency navigation could not resolve as effectively.​
  • Dedicated case manager builds confidence: Assigning a specific Integration Support Specialist to each repatriate or family creates continuity and personalized guidance that is particularly valuable for entrepreneurs making high-stakes relocation and investment decisions under uncertainty.​
  • Foundation partnership reduces government cost: The H. Hovnanian Family Foundation's provision of free facility space demonstrates how diaspora philanthropy can offset infrastructure costs while signal alignment between private diaspora interests and government repatriation objectives, a partnership model with potential in other diaspora-engaged countries.
  • Co-location with NGO partners multiplies value: Housing the Center alongside Repat Armenia and Birthright Armenia creates a critical mass of diaspora support services that generates network effects, allowing entrepreneurs to access complementary programs, peer communities, and professional networks through a single physical location.
  • Multilingual delivery is non-negotiable: Offering services in Eastern Armenian, Western Armenian, English, and Russian reflects the linguistic reality of the global Armenian diaspora and ensures that language proficiency does not screen out diaspora entrepreneurs most likely to bring internationally acquired business expertise and capital.

CURATED BY

Tom Hancock

Research Associate
Global Entrepreneurship Network
United Kingdom