Just as a judge with high professional competencies but with vulnerable integrity qualities cannot administer justice, in the same way a judge invulnerable integrity qualities but with weak professional competencies cannot administer justice.

Mr. Karen Zadoyan, President of the Armenian Lawyers’ Association NGO said during a joint expert online workshop dedicated to the study “Integrity Checking and Responsibility of Judges under the extraordinary conditions (of transitional justice): International experience and mechanisms for implementation in Armenia” organized by the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia, and Armenian Lawyers’ Association (ALA).

“The more sovereign non-governmental organizations operate in silence, and the less they publicly demonstrate their statutory activities, the more that place is filled by NGOs that try to present themselves as dominant in Armenia, but this is a deception, in fact it is not so. Moreover, there are opportunities for all professional non-governmental organizations to work and act, and there should be no discriminatory attitude by both state bodies and international organizations, there should be a more inclusive attitude, because only joint and complementary efforts can solve the existing problems. Our judiciary is one of those problems as well. We know that the issues related to it are not new, they are of continuous nature, starting from the period of our independence until now; the problems are deep and need systemic solutions,” Karen Zadoyan, President of the ALA, said in his speech during the workshop.

He noted that the judiciary is not the only one that has problems. Both the executive and the legislature are vulnerable as well. According to Karen Zadoyan, the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia has been investing its efforts for more than two years in order to be able to offer systemic solutions to political forces, professional organizations, and the current political authorities in order to solve those problems.

“We have held a number of professional conferences, workshops dedicated to transitional justice, judicial system reforms, and this next initiative is more aimed at assessing the integrity of judges and improving the judiciary. We know that in general, the term integrity contains elements, according to the international definition, which are professional competence, accountability and transparency, ethics and being free from corruption,

“The term justice (“ardaradatutyun” in Armenian) consists of two components, of which the component justice (ardarutyun) is the moral side, and the component trial (datavarutyun) is the professional side, and it is the harmonious unity of the two that leads to the realization of real justice,” the ALA President said.

Karen Zadoyan also noted that the support of professional civil society organizations is important for solving this problem.