1000 Drams Armenian Genocide

Artsakh — the self-declared republic occupying the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave — issued this coin in 2004 while its own political status remained unrecognized by any UN member state, including Armenia itself. The subject matter is pointed: a people with no internationally recognized sovereignty issuing a commemorative tied to another people's systematic destruction. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which killed an estimated 30,000 people between 1988 and 1994, lends the issuer an unsettled authority that gives the commemoration an edge most national mint programs lack.