World refugee day, resilience through culture

For the World refugee day, L’Œuvre d’Orient participated in the organization of an online event, on the initiative of the Conflicts and displacement working group, gathering NGOs accredited to the 2003 Convention of UNESCO for intangible heritage. On June 20, 2025, the working group organized a discussion with four refugees, led by Sara Green, the coordinator of the working group. The goal was to showcase the role that the living heritage is playing in migration experiences. David Gabrielan was invited by L’Œuvre d’Orient to give his testimony.

David teaches English and French in Armenia. He had to leave Nagorno-Karabakh in 2021, after the 2020 war with Azerbaijan, to take care of his daughter who could no longer speak following the trauma of bombardments. After Nagorno-Karabakh was invaded in 2023, they lost everything.

David talks about his attachment to Nagorno-Karabakh dialect, which differs from the Armenian spoken in Yerevan : “Armenians in Armenia do not understand our dialect, which contains many Azerbaijani words. This language is a richness, a part of our identity. My daughter had to speak classical Armenian to treat her traumas. Now she is healed, we start again to speak Artsakh dialect to her at home, even though she lives in an environment where it is rarely used.”

David also mentions the difficulty of exile : “After the attack of Azerbaijan, our lives were turned upside down. All the institutions were destroyed. Our living conditions were so difficult that my daughter was sick all the time during the winter, and I developed diabetes because of anxiety. […] In Yerevan, we felt like strangers. I could not find a job, due to a lack of contacts.”

He finally mentions the importance of preserving one’s cultural roots and to pass it on, in order to keep Artsakh alive, to simply live : “Losing my dialect would be a vital loss for me. I think it is very important to keep living with our traditions, to pass them on and stay connected to our roots. As a teacher, I play a role in this transmission.”