The Ministry of Justice has a discriminatory approach in-between NGOs: “Community Initiatives and Advocacy Center” NGO

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”.

The Ministry of Justice reported that the discussion was held “with the participation of more than 50 stakeholders.”

Ms Mariam Atorakalyan, President of the “Community Initiatives and Advocacy Center” NGO in the conversation with Iravaban.net said, “They held a discussion with themselves.”

“In general, not only the Ministry of Justice, but also no other ministry does not really work with non-governmental organizations,,” she said.

According to her, judicial reforms are not noticeable.

“In any case, there must be invitations. The organizations are active, it would not be correct to say that they are not active; the Ministry itself should invite them. There should be no discrimination between the organizations, I have noticed this. As far as I have noticed, the work is mainly with the NGOs funded by the Open Society Foundation: ‘why is it so?’ they can answer that question,” Mariam Atorakalyan said.

The President of the “Community Initiatives and Advocacy Center” NGO thinks that they trust those NGOs more.

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.