14.04.2026


Today, April 14, Benjamin Haddad, the French Minister Delegate for European Affairs of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Museum. The Minister was accompanied by the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of France to Armenia, Olivier Decottignies, and other officials. The guests were welcomed and accompanied during the visit by the Acting Director of the AGMI, Hrachya Tashchyan.

Benjamin Haddad placed a wreath at the memorial wall, after which the members of the delegation laid flowers at the Eternal Flame and honored the memory of the martyrs of the Armenian Genocide with a minute of silence.

The delegation toured the memorial grounds. At the suggestion of Ambassador Olivier Decottignies, they approached the Memory Wall, in the back of which special niches contain small urns filled with soil taken from the graves of several foreign public and political figures, intellectuals, and missionaries who raised their voices in protest against the massacres and genocide of Armenians perpetrated by the Turkish government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The guests stopped at the memorial stones of Anatole France and Louis Dartige du Fournet.

The delegation then visited the Armenian Genocide Museum, where they were introduced to the permanent and temporary exhibitions by guide Hasmik Martirosyan. Benjamin Haddad signed the Book of Honorary Guests and then toured the museum's final hall—the outdoor inner courtyard—where the words of prominent statesmen, diplomats, scientists, and writers condemning the Armenian Genocide are engraved on a semicircular basalt wall divided into twelve equal sections.

Finally, the Acting Director of the AGMI, Hrachya Tashchyan, presented Mr. Haddad with a French-language photo book of the AGMI and Raymond Kévorkian's booklet, "The Armenian Genocide and its Consequences."