The lack of work is leading to the gradual aging of Kakhakn, a village of 396 inhabitants in Armenia’s Gegharkunik Province a mere five kilometers from the Azerbaijani border on the southeastern edge of Lake Sevan.

Kakhakn Mayor Ashot Vatyan says that young men in the village aren’t marrying due to the lack of employment.

“We have young people who aren’t marrying. They are afraid of starting families because there’s no work. In addition, not everyone is fir for village life. There are no girls in the village. They finish school and are immediately taken away by people from other villages,” Vatyan told Hetq.

Kakhakn, one of the eighteen villages that comprise the town of Geghamsar, had three births and five deaths in 2019. He days that young people are leaving for Sevan, Masis and Abovyan for agricultural work.

Ashot Vatyan

“There’s one of them. He’s already 34 and not marrying,” says Vatyan in his office, pointing to co-village Samvel Nigaryan.

“There’s no time for marriage. We’re busy working on getting fodder for the animals,” jokes Nigaryan.

Karlen Nigaryan, Samvel’s father, was also in Vatyan’s office at the time of our conversation.

“Roads, roads, roads. This is our basic problem. There’s also no events hall in the village. We can’t hold any functions. These two issues demand immediate resolution,” says Karlen Nigaryan.

The seven-kilometer road from Metz Masrik to Kakhakn is in poor shape. It takes thirty minutes to navigate the distance.

Vatyan says he’s raised the road issue to the district MPs, who’ve promised to act.

Armenians fleeing Azerbaijan in the late 1980s resettled in Kakhakn. The village lacks a cultural center and a kindergarten.

Mayor Vatyan says the number of children in the village never exceeds seven, not enough to justify a kindergarten. The village does have its own high school and dispensary.

The issue of the depopulation of Armenian border villages in this region isn’t new.

Hetq visited Kakhakn in 2012. Artash Khloyan was the principal of the high school at the time and talked about the decreasing enrolment of area schools.

“Those who have the means are leaving the village. They are going to other parts of the country or overseas. I fought in the battle to liberate Kelbajar in 1993 and am trying the best I can to keep people here. It’s a bad situation and the same is happening in all the villages,” Khloyan told Hetq at the time, noting that enrollment at his school had dropped from 117 in 1996 to 40.

At the time, Khloyan accused the government of neglecting rural residents.

“Right now, the government is more concerned with building high-rise buildings in Yerevan. What we now have is the capital, Yerevan, and a 150 kilometer stretch of border full of empty communities,” Khloyan told Hetq in 2012.

Eight years ago, to encourage young people to stay in Kakhakn, village residents requested that the government to improve the roads and think about creating jobs in the region.

Their requests haven’t changed over the years.