YEREVAN. – These are reforms aimed against despair. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this at the government session today, referring to the government's decision to liquidate 4 boarding houses and one orphanage.

According to this decision, the funds for boarding schools will be used to support their children, but within their families.

“To say a ‘boarding school student,’ ‘orphanage student,’ in Armenia means to read a sentence against a person that he will be outside the margins of public life and, in general, success, throughout life. We are not going to put up with this situation,” Pashinyan said.

“Its [the reform’s] goal should be one: to increase the competitiveness of boarding school and orphanage children in life, to increase their confidence in their own strengths," the prime minister emphasized.

The next important issue, according to him, is that the state is doing its best to bring these children back to families, but he added that there is legitimate concern about whether all families are capable of accepting these children.