Armenia does not sign the Strasbourg Convention, and it uses a script found nowhere else in the world. Between them, those two facts explain most of what makes a case here cost more than a comparable one in, say, Western Europe.
The script is the real bottleneck
Armenian documentation, death certificates, police records, post-mortem reports, Ministry of Health export permits, is all produced in the Armenian script. It bears no relation to Georgian, Cyrillic, Arabic, or any Latin alphabet, and UK-accredited legal translators who can work with it are genuinely thin on the ground. Fewer hold this accreditation than for Georgian, and considerably fewer than for most European languages. This isn’t a minor line item. It’s the factor that shapes both the timeline and the cost of nearly every Armenia case we handle, and it’s why we contact the British Embassy Yerevan for their current recommended translators the moment we’re notified of a death.
No direct cargo route
There are no direct cargo flights between Armenia and the UK. Wizz Air does fly London Luton to Yerevan, but as a low-cost carrier it doesn’t handle human remains cargo, so that route isn’t available whatever else is happening. Repatriation cargo instead connects via Vienna with Austrian Airlines or Frankfurt with Lufthansa. A routed booking through a European hub, involving two handling agents rather than one, simply costs more than a direct sector would, and this applies to every case regardless of where in Armenia the death occurred.
Where in Armenia matters
The Republican Institute of Forensic Medical Expertise in Yerevan handles all post-mortem work nationally, so any case outside the capital needs transfer to Yerevan first. Mount Aragats, the country’s highest peak at 4,090 metres, draws British trekkers and occasionally requires rescue and evacuation before a body can even be moved. Lake Sevan, roughly 60 kilometres east of Yerevan, is a popular destination and the site of occasional drowning incidents. Both add transfer time and cost on top of the baseline Yerevan case.
Full bilateral documentation, not a shortcut
Because Armenia hasn’t signed the Strasbourg Convention, there’s no simplified international transport permit that UK authorities accept without question. Every document in the chain, the death certificate, the cause of death statement, the embalming certificate, needs individual certification and translation. Building this chain correctly the first time avoids the far greater cost of having a document rejected and needing to redo it under pressure.
What we can offer
We’ll tell you plainly, before any work begins, what translation and routing are likely to cost in your specific circumstances, rather than leaving you to discover it partway through.
Read how to get a foreign death certificate translated, or see the full Armenia repatriation guide for the complete picture.
Contact Repatriate Service on +44 7703 577246 at any hour, or use the enquiry form below.