Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

On September 23, 2019, A. Sakunts, Chairman of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor, delivered a speech during the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM) of OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights held in Warsaw.  He touched upon the situation of the judiciary, the lack of the independence of the judiciary in Armenia. He then touched upon the new government. 

“The government must enact cardinal systemic changes. Legislation needs to be amended so as to ensure the independence of the judiciary.

Representatives of the previous government have been criticized for supposedly meddling in the work of the independent judiciary. That’s rather curious, because what everyone’s very concerned about is the immunity of the judiciary. We’re reaping what we sow, in fact.

Now, the time has come for us to do something, to change things. In light of the situation, I call on ODIHR and the international community to do everything they can to assist the Armenian authorities so that we can overcome all of the hurdles on the road to judicial independence.

ODIHR issues excellence reports, they issued one on the judicial monitoring of March 1, 2009 cases, we have the UPR recommendations, the Council of Europe recommendations. Therefore, we’re very hopeful that we will get extensive support with the cooperation of Civil Society”.