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CIVICUS discusses disinformation campaigns targeting the LGBTQI+ community in Armenia with Hripsime Kizogyan, Executive Director of Pink Armenia, a community-based organisation that defends the human rights of LGBTQI+ people and advocates for policy change.
Hripsime KizogyanAhead of Armenia’s recent parliamentary election, a coordinated online campaign tried to portray Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government as secretly backing the LGBTQI+ community. The campaign spread AI-generated images showing Pashinyan at a Pride event that never happened and falsely claimed Pink Armenia was behind the event, as part of a wider effort to present LGBTQI+ organisations as vehicles for foreign agendas. Campaigns such as these help drive hostility against LGBTQI+ people.
What was the fake Pride campaign about?
In late January, online stories started appearing that claimed that Armenia’s first LGBTQI+ Pride march would take place in the capital, Yerevan, on 7 April, supported by our organisation and personally led by Nikol Pashinyan. The date was no accident, because 7 April is a religious holiday and Mother’s Day in Armenia.
None of it was true. The stories first appeared on a brand-new website that had been created only 11 days earlier. It used an AI-generated image of Pashinyan and disappeared shortly after. But the damage was done. Georgian and Turkish media outlets and dozens of Facebook and Twitter/X accounts had already picked up the story.
The same false campaign came back in April, this time amplified by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and Russian outlets. It came with two new claims, both equally false: that Pink Armenia helped write same-sex marriage into a supposedly leaked new draft of the Armenian constitution, and that we’re funded by the US Agency for International Development. We denied this publicly, but by then the story had travelled.
The fake Pride story was just one piece of a much bigger campaign against our organisation and, more broadly, against LGBTQI+ people. A fake account impersonating Pink Armenia on Twitter/X managed to buy a verification checkmark before being suspended. Someone also set up a lookalike domain and sent emails in the name of our former president, telling schools that an LGBTQI+ curriculum would be introduced in 2027.
We also know that foreign bloggers were approached and offered paid trips to Yerevan to publicly urge Pashinyan to ‘support Pride’ as a show of solidarity with Europe. Someone pasted images of same-sex couples on walls in Yerevan, then photographed them as ‘evidence’ of activism that wasn’t happening.
What was the campaign trying to achieve?
Whoever was behind the fake Pride campaign wanted two things: to provoke fear and hostility towards LGBTQI+ people and to damage the government and its pro-European course by association. The false claims reinforced a familiar storyline in which European integration will bring the imposition of ‘foreign values’ and LGBTQI+ rights are the leading edge of that imposition.
This rhetoric didn’t come out of nowhere. Across the region, anti-LGBTQI+ discourse is increasingly tied to anti-democratic narratives, attacks on civil society and conspiracy theories that portray human rights organisations as foreign agents and threats to national identity. The same thing happened in Moldova and elsewhere in the region, with LGBTQI+ rights used to split the electorate ahead of a vote.
Although Armenia isn’t like neighbouring countries where anti-LGBTQI+ campaigns are written into state policy, the election showed our community being used when politically convenient. That kind of rhetoric makes the public environment hostile, legitimises discrimination and creates conditions in which hate speech and violence become more socially acceptable.
What has changed, and what hasn’t, for LGBTQI+ rights in Armenia?
Some things have improved. Earlier this year, Pink Armenia was formally included in public advisory councils at the health, internal affairs, justice, and labour and social affairs ministries. This means we can now raise issues directly with them.
But the law hasn’t changed. Armenia still hasn’t recognised same-sex partnerships. There’s no anti-discrimination protection covering sexual orientation and gender identity in most areas of life. When someone is the victim of a hate crime just for being LGBTQI+, that still doesn’t count as an aggravating factor.
Social attitudes are the other barrier. LGBTQI+ people still face discrimination in education, employment, family settings and healthcare. Being open about who you are still carries a risk, so many people hide it or leave Armenia in search of safety.
How is Pink Armenia countering disinformation?
We monitor media and social media systematically, documenting disinformation and hate speech targeting LGBTQI+ people and tracking the politicians and outlets pushing it. This gives us the evidence to respond publicly, take issues to policymakers and, when needed, go to court.
When false claims about us circulate, we answer them directly. We issue public clarifications and work with independent fact-checkers such as the Fact Investigation Platform and Media.am.
On digital security, we report impersonating accounts and fraudulent lookalike domains so they get taken down, and we warn partner institutions such as schools when fake messages go out in our name.
What support does Armenian civil society need?
We need stronger international cooperation to deal with disinformation networks that operate across borders to spread anti-gender narratives. Sharing of advocacy strategies, best practices, digital security expertise and research would strengthen civil society across the region.
We also need long-term support, not just project funding that responds to one crisis at a time. We need funds that are sustainable and flexible enough to keep our services running while we react quickly to disinformation campaigns and security threats.
International partners can do something else too: keep raising discrimination, hate speech and attacks on civil society in their diplomatic conversations with Armenian authorities. Public attention and international scrutiny make it harder to treat these issues as optional.
Ultimately, supporting LGBTQI+ rights in Armenia isn’t only about one community. It’s about defending democratic values, protecting civic space and making sure no group is excluded from human rights because it has become a politically convenient target.
CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.
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