Human rights advocate Anoush Baghdassarian has always maintained that true leadership starts with service. “If we don’t show up for each other, who will?” she asks, her spirited energy tangible even over a video call she’s taking from her family home in Uruguay. This mantra has guided her lifelong commitment to community work, even from an early age.
Now, the human rights lawyer is on a mission called “Rerooted.” Initiated to create a comprehensive and accessible database of Armenian testimonies, the end goal is to preserve history, advocate for long-term justice, and redress harm by helping victims of injustice feel seen and heard. “I often reflect on what justice is for people in the wake of mass atrocity, what are they seeking? What is at the core of any justice mechanism? For me, the answer is acknowledgement,” she states.
For the young lawyer, community advocacy isn’t just a passion—it’s a legacy. “One of the most beautiful narratives of my journey is knowing that my great-great-grandfather Hovhannes Aharonian was an active citizen too. He assisted AGBU during and after the Armenian Genocide,” she reflects. Pre-Genocide, Aharonian was the director of 32 schools and the AGBU farmer aid fund in Zeitun. After surviving the Genocide, Aharonian found himself in a refugee camp in Port Said, Egypt. There, he became an integral part of the Sissouan AGBU School. In 1919, he headed the AGBU Keleguian Orphanage of Beirut, later lending his leadership to the AGBU Vaspurakan and Araratian orphanages of Jerusalem. In 1924, he was assigned by AGBU to bring 250 Armenian orphans from Jerusalem to Yerevan. While in Yerevan, he selected the area that would become the “Nor Zeitun” neighborhood of Armenia. Later, Aharonian settled in Uruguay, becoming the president of the Armenian community there between 1926-1938.
In her own lifetime, Baghdassarian found another strong role model in her grandmother Profesora and Concertista Antaram Aharonian. “A devoted leader in the Armenian community in Uruguay, Argentina, and Armenia, Antaram was close colleagues with Aram Khatchadourian, Avedik Isahakyan, Nighos Nigoghosian, and Baruyr Sevak,” she says. “In 1955, she represented the Armenian community of Uruguay in the election of the Catholicos at Etchmiadzin, Vazken I. She was a force of nature and her legacy of advocacy and cultural preservation inspires me every day.”
Although Baghdassarian is currently in Uruguay for “Rerooted,” she was born and raised on Long Island, New York, in a diverse Armenian household with her parents, Drs. Bagdig and Ani Baghdassarian touting Armenian roots from Greece, Egypt, Uruguay, and Argentina. Raised within the St. Sarkis and Holy Martyrs Armenian church communities, she was deeply aware of her heritage and the weight of human rights abuses throughout Armenian history.
“One of the ways I learned I could help, even at an early age, was through listening—so I’d spend my weekends listening to residents at the Armenian old age home, listening to my family, listening to anyone who wanted to share their story.”
A defining testimony in her early community advocacy was a play she wrote as a senior in high school about the Armenian genocide. “I produced it at the theater of my town’s library, at Holy Martyrs Church, and then in California when I was in college,” she recalls. As an undergrad student, she continued to search for opportunities to work on genocide awareness and to expand her scope of human rights work.
The summer of 2016 was a watershed moment for Baghdassarian, “I was working as an intern at Human Rights Watch and trying to come up with ideas for a grant proposal,” she explains. That’s when she met Souleymane Guengueng. “He was a survivor of torture in Chad in the 1980s and was determined to collect survivor testimonies and demand justice.”
At the same time, she was focused on human rights abuses in Syria and decided the grant proposal should address injustice against the Armenians living there. Baghdassarian partnered with fellow Armenian diasporan Ani Schug to start “Rerooted,” a public archive for Armenian testimonies. While the archive initially focused on Syrian-Armenians, with a mini grant from AGBU “Rerooted” expanded to host collections from Armenians in over 20 countries, reaching a critical point with the Second Artsakh War, spurring the Artsakh collection.
As a graduate of Harvard Law School and a visiting professional at the International Criminal Court (ICC), Baghdassarian was one step ahead and knew the power that survivor testimonies would have in international court, so she packed her bags and brought her project to Armenia, living in the dorms at AGBU’s Vahe Karapetian Center.
Baghdassarian spent time in Goris at the border interviewing forcibly displaced individuals from Artsakh to preserve their culture, dialect, history, and evidence. “Rerooted” partnered with human rights clinics at Harvard Law School and Leiden University where students drafted an Article 15 Communication to the ICC for the crimes that occurred in Nagorno-Karabakh.
As she continues to advocate for a more just world, Anoush Baghdassarian is resolute that acknowledgement is key to progress and healing. “Change doesn’t happen overnight, but every story is another puzzle piece to the truth and towards acknowledgement,” she emphasizes.
