On 11 November, the Ministry of Justice published the results of a professional discussion entitled “Course of Judiciary Reform in Post-Revolution and Post-Election Armenia” organized with the Open Society Foundations-Armenia on 2 November.
The message of the ministry says: “The Ministry of Justice organized a conference with the participation of several dozen lawyers-scholars, representatives of civil society, public and political figures, lawyers, state officials and other interested stakeholders.”
We have already referred to this topic, noting which organizations were mainly present at the discussion. It was noted that these CSOs have been funded or are being funded in different years from the same source, Open Society Foundations-Armenia (popularly known as the George Soros Foundation).
On 11 November of this year, summing up the discussions of the conference, the specialists of the Ministry of Justice came to the following conclusion.
“Vetting of Judges can be done in three ways:
- By a new body specially formed for that purpose, for which the procedure, criteria, stages of vetting of judges will be defined by law, as well as the composition of that body, powers, decision-making procedure, appeal mechanisms and grounds.
- Initiating disciplinary proceedings on the grounds of violations defined by law and holding judges accountable.
- By setting new standards by law for initiating disciplinary proceedings,” the Ministry said in a statement.
It should be noted that , the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenian CSOs with the Armenian Bar Association on 1 November published studies and roadmaps for judicial reform, detailing both the international experience and its possible localization to the Armenian reality.
On 8 November of this year, expert online workshop on the study “Integrity Checking and Responsibility of Judges under the extraordinary conditions (of transitional justice): International experience and mechanisms for implementation in Armenia” organized jointly by the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia, and Armenian Lawyers’ Association (ALA) took place, and as a result of which some editorial changes were made in the study .
In an interview about the evidence based study with Iravaban.net, Ms Syuzanna Soghomonyan, President of the Armenian Young Lawyers Association, member of the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia, anti-corruption expert, spoke about the work done much earlier. “Back in late 2018, the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia carried out large-scale work, studying the experience of 35 countries that have implemented transitional justice tools, which had both successful and failed experiences. These results were presented during the Parliamentary hearings, and one of the three key speakers was representative of the CSO sector, who represented the Armenian Lawyers’ Association – the Coordinating Secretariat of the Coalition. Then, taking into account the experiences of other countries and the Armenian context, we studied and presented a more targeted study, which refers to the implementation of vetting in the judiciary.”
According to the anti-corruption expert, the published study in fact was a review of the previous work and adaptation to the current situation.
It turns out that 3 out of 10 proposals of the presented study are partially reflected by the Ministry of Justice as the results of the conference discussion, showing that mechanisms for integrity checking of judges are being introduced.
Thus, the Ministry of Justice creates an imitation of work, that serious discussions were organized, proposals were collected, the result was presented, while all this was presented with more arguments, clear steps and details, in the published in advance by the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia and the Armenian Lawyers’ Association in the study on the topic “Integrity Checking and Responsibility of Judges under the extraordinary conditions (of transitional justice): International experience and mechanisms for implementation in Armenia”.
