Among the actions of the 2023-2026 Human Rights Strategy implementation plan is the improvement of procedures for ensuring child visitation with parents and close relatives within enforcement proceedings, which has been partially implemented.
In a conversation with Iravaban.net, international human rights expert and lawyer David Tumasyan said that if a child lives with one parent and the other parent has no real opportunity to see the child, this will gradually lead to a situation where the child at some point will not want to see the parent: “The implementation of psychological and social work is very important here, so that the child is properly explained what the other parent’s behavior is conditioned by.”
Even young children give various reasons why they don’t want to see a parent: “The SCEI [Service of Compulsory Enforcement of Judicial Acts] employees, for example, don’t know these nuances and don’t understand them, they will only record the fact that the child said ‘no, I don’t want to see,’ but from a substantive perspective, this doesn’t stem from the child’s best interests.”
“There is a dual problem: if there is an issue of organizing visitation, then in that case the parent with whom the child lives can create obstacles, and the second problem is the SCEI officer’s lack of knowledge and failure to show diligence, or in some cases ensuring only the formal side, which depends on the mention of visitation in the judicial act.”
David Tumasyan also notes that when they don’t achieve any positive results, parents or relatives appeal to the Police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs: “It is obvious that we have a significant gap in implementation in this area.”
Details in the video.
The Armenian Lawyers Association conducts monitoring aimed at the implementation of judicial and legal reforms, anti-corruption policy, as well as the national strategy for the protection of human rights and the action plans derived from them. Within the monitoring framework, Iravaban.net online professional media, with the help of specialists in the field, analyzes and covers both fully implemented, partially implemented, or completely unfulfilled actions, also addressing the omissions, obstacles, and reasons recorded in them.
