Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

On 04.11.2022, the RA Draft Law “On State Secret” (hereinafter also referred to as “the Draft) was presented to the National Assembly. The Draft was developed by the RA National Security Service and was put for public discussion on the Unified Website for Publication of Draft Legal Acts (hereinafter also referred to as “the Platform”) prior to its submission to the Parliament. 

During the discussion stage on the platform, a number of civil society organizations (Law Development and Protection Foundation, Open Society Foundations-Armenia, Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center NGO, Protection of Rights without Borders NGO, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor NGO) presented an expert opinion regarding the draft, based on the study of international experience, recommending a number of amendments. The author accepted two of the submitted recommendations partially, the accepted recommendations were as follows: differentiation of information retention periods according to different degrees of confidentiality (the original version of the draft established a 30-year retention period for information of all levels of confidentiality) and clarification and expansion of the list of information not subject to encryption. At the same time, the second of the above-mentioned recommendations considered acceptable was not incorporated in the edition of the Draft submitted to the National Assembly.

Taking into account that the Draft does not meet advanced international experience and standards in a number of aspects, as well as contains risks of disproportionately restricting the right to freedom of information, we propose to review a number of legal regulations therein and re-edit the legal provisions accordingly. You can read about the main issues raised by the study of the Draft by downloading the document. 

Signatories of the opinion: Law Development and Protection Foundation, Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center NGO, Democracy Development Foundation, Protection of Rights without Borders NGO, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor NGO