The United States' recognition of the Armenian genocide is the American formal recognition that the deportation and massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War constituted genocide. The United States recognizes the Armenian genocide through two congressional resolutions passed by both houses of the United States Congress, and by presidential announcement. The House of Representatives passed a resolution with broad support on October 29, 2019, and the Senate did the same by unanimous consent on December 12, 2019, making the recognition of the Armenian genocide part of the policy of the United States. Before 2019, there were numerous proposed resolutions in Congress to recognize the Armenian genocide, all failing to receive enough support.
On 22 April 1981, President Ronald Reagan first referred to the events as a "genocide" in a comparison to the Holocaust.[1][2] On April 24, 2021, the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, President Joe Biden referred to the events as "genocide" in a statement released by the White House,[3][4][5] in which the President formally equated the genocide perpetrated against Armenians with atrocities on the scale of those committed in Nazi-occupied Europe.[5]