The Ministry of Justice must have the political will to be able to implement the recommendations of the CSO sector: Ara Melikjanyan

On 2 November, the Ministry of Justice organized a discussion entitled “Course of Judiciary Reform in Post-Revolution and Post-Election Armenia” with the support of the Open Society Foundations-Armenia within the framework of the program “Partnership for Open Society Initiative”.

Ara Melikjanyan, Member of the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia, President of “LogoS” Human Rights NGO, in a conversation with Iravaban.net has, said that any such initiative that is being implemented requires mutual efforts.

“For so long, the signals have been made only from us, the civil society, and from the opposite side, signals have either been absent or the proposals we have presented have not been accepted or have been accepted partially. I think in this case the Ministry of Justice and the Government in general should have a more constructive approach,” he said.

Referring to the effectiveness of the cooperation between the Ministry of Justice and NGOs, Ara Melikjanyan said that no noticeable change had taken place.

“These changes of justice ministers also have a significant impact on the environment of cooperation, because we did not face a similar problem before, the ministry worked with a specific method and adopted policy, and now, due to momentary changes of ministers, that policy is changing, which significantly affects our programs. There are programs that we implement in cooperation with the ministry, but due to the changes of the ministers, we have to go through that process again, explain again, and present again what the program is, what problems we solve, and so on.,” he said.

He also commented on the briefing of the Minister of Justice Karen Andreasyan with the journalists in the National Assembly on November 3, during which the Minister mentioned “Whoever understands something from vetting in this country, the smartest people gathered yesterday, we have not summed up the results yet, in 1-2 days they will present what the experts understood, whether it is possible or not. If it is possible, we will start working out a separate law on vetting in a few days, if it is not possible, then we will think about that issue together with the constitutional reforms.”

Ara Melikjanyan is full of hope that what the Minister said will be implemented in practice in the future as well.

“Because there have been discussions before, during which we came to a consensus, but then the decision was significantly different from the proposals made during our discussions. As a result of working with the responsible departments, they have always said yes, it is true, because the expert level of our NGOs is sufficient to make proposals, but after that, in practice, the picture was completely different. The Ministry of Justice must have the political will to be able to implement the recommendations of the CSO sector,” he said.

Iravaban.net has already referred to the veiled event dedicated to the judicial reforms of the Ministry of Justice and some civil society organizations that have become partners.

To recall that on 1 November, the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia (currently includes 71 civil society organizations) and the Armenian Lawyers Association published two joint expert studies on Integrity Checking and Responsibility of Judges under the extraordinary conditions (of transitional justice) and the Guarantees of Independence and Effective Functioning of the Court.