For the past few decades now, April 24 has served as one of the major dates on the calendar for the Armenian people, a day representing perhaps the most significant manifestation of united Armenian political will.

 In the Armenian world, that date began first as one of requiems and remembrance, gradually developing into a day of righteous indignation and demands for justice through the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Nevertheless, the 24of April is a day of loss, a day dedicated to acknowledging that greatest of losses.

However, as a nation and as a community in the pursuit of justice, we need a day of victory and reparation, a day of the establishment of justice and our rights. We have such a day; the day which keeps the flames of victory burning is the 22of November - the date of the Arbitral Award of US President Woodrow Wilson deciding the frontier between Armenia and Turkey.

On that day, the arbitral award granted to the Republic ofA rmenia a part of our historical heartland, in the north-east. That day put in place and enforced forever a ruling which is binding, legally inviolable and perpetual for the existence of our rights, all in accordance with international law.

As the Arbitral Award was realised on the basis of the unqualified compromis of Turkey and Armenia, as well as of the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Belgium, Greece, Canada, India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, having been enforced upon signing, it is therefore binding, inviolable and perpetual for all of the above countries and their successor states. It is also binding, inviolable and perpetual for theUS, as the arbitral award bears the Great Seal of theUnited States of America, signed by the US President, and co-signed by the Secretary of State.

According to the basic principles of international law, codified by numerous international documents, the arbitral award is to be carried out by all parties to that document, that is, by the countries which formed part of the compromis. It is their duty without reservation, their absolute responsibility. Thus, it ought to be a pan-national issue for us, to demand from those countries on the 22^nd of November each year, to carry out their responsibility as per international law, and not to do so simply as a gesture of goodwill, but as an immediate and inviolable international obligation which has lain forgotten, and which has partly been denied.

November 22 must be rendered a day of restoration of justice, of demands for national reparations and the re-establishment of our dispossessed rights.

In the words of that great Armenian, Garegin Nzhdeh,

Hayrenadiroutian Day – The Day to Reclaim the Homeland

The Hayrenadiroutiun Public Movement calls upon all Armenians to join us in our initiative, celebrating appropriately each year, with pickets, rallies, and marches, Hayrenadiroutian Day.

The Hayrenadiroutiun Public Movement