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On December 11, the members of the RA National Assembly Standing Committee on Protection of Human Rights and Public Affairs had a working discussion with the RA Representative to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Yeghishe Kirakosyan.

According to the Committee Chair Naira Zohrabyan, through many centuries the ECHR-Armenia relations had been complicated, and she being a Member of the Armenian Delegation to PACE, had a feeling of inconvenience, when the regular suit against Armenia had been sent to the ECHR, and the Court obligated Armenia to pay rather big sums of money: in case of having a fair judicial system our country could avoid such judgments.

The Committee Chair was also interested in the quantity of the suits against the RA, and as a result of the ECHR judgments the amount of money paid until now by the RA Government.

Presenting the functions of the Office, Yeghishe Kirakosyan highlighted the cooperation with the RA legislative body and the expansion of that framework.

He has clarified that today there are about 109 judgments in the ECHR against the RA which has overcome the phases of entering them in the procedure. Yeghishe Kirakosyan has noticed that Armenia is in the series of 10 countries, from where the most applications have been received. He has noted that not all applications are against the Republic of Armenia: the applications have been increased especially after the April four-day war.

The RA Representative to the ECHR has clarified that the citizens’ claims are directed to the ECHR, mainly refer to the violations of rights to life and property, the tortures and inhuman attitude in the criminal-executive institutions, the violations of the law to freedom and personal inviolability, the execution of the right to fair judicial examination, etc.

The MPs were interested in the procedure of a number of suits under examination in the ECHR, highlighted the deepening of cooperation with the Office and the submission of the report to the legislative body on the works of the organization, which was gladly accepted by Yeghishe Kirakosyan.

The participants especially emphasized the undertaking of the steps directed to the prevention of suicides and murders being committed because of non statutory relations in the RA Armed Forces, touched upon the legislative initiative aimed at that goal and adopted in the first reading recently.

Summing up the discussion the Committee Chair Naira Zohrabyan was interested in the possibility of investing a mechanism, due to which the compensations to be paid to the claimants be exempted from the owners or officials, who caused damages to the citizens and were obliged to apply to the European Court. Yeghishe Kirakosyan considered possible the further discussion of this and other problems and the elaboration of the legislative initiatives for avoiding the submission of new suits against the RA.