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On March 16 and 17, within the framework of the cooperation between the RA National Assembly Staff and the Parliamentary Centre (Canada) a workshop on the theme Disability and Inclusion was held.

Welcoming the participants of the workshop, the Chief of Staff, Secretary General of the RA NA Staff Davit Arakelyan noted that in the coming years the inclusiveness will be in the centre of attention of the NA Staff. He thanked the Parliamentary Centre (Canada) for supporting, underlining the importance of creating a platform of cooperation between the civil society and the NA Staff.

In recent two years, the Staff of the National Assembly actively cooperates with the civil society. Still in 2022, for the first time the NA Staff initiated a round-table discussion with the NGOs being engaged with the issues of inclusiveness. “As a result of cooperation, this year, for the first time there is implementation of providing inclusiveness in the budgetary allocations at the expense of the budgetary means. Within the framework of the increase of the role of the National Assembly, we have allocated certain amount of money for obtaining reasonable adjustments. In the next years, we design to carry out measures with the colleagues of the civil society for improving the building conditions in order to make the building of the parliament more inclusive and accessible,” the NA Deputy Chief of Staff Heghine Khachikyan said, adding that it is designed to make inclusive the building conditions and the rendering services, as well as the relevant amendments of the legal acts of the NA Staff will be also observed in terms of inclusiveness.

“In democratic countries they aspire to have equally available the services being rendered in the public sector for all layers of the society,” the Local Coordinator of the Support to the Parliament of Armenia project Hovhannes Margaryants said. He informed that one of the core directions of cooperation with Staff of the National Assembly is the development of the institutional and professional capacities of the Staff for gender-sensitive, inclusive, corporative-strategic and operational planning and implementation. In particular, study of the international experience in the engagement of the women, young people and persons with disability in the parliamentary activity was done. “The NA Staff created a platform of cooperation with the NGOs of the inclusiveness. In the public sector of Armenia, it is one of the special cases, when the structure takes such a welcoming step,” Hovhannes Margaryants documented.

The members of the coalition of the inclusive legal reforms presented to the Staff their programmes, the work done, organizing discussions on the themes regarding the discrimination of the models of the disability recognition, right communication with the persons with physical, psycho-social disabilities.

The coalition of the inclusive legal reforms is a union of the organizations and individuals being engaged with the protection of rights of persons with disability, and the purpose of it is the protection of rights of the persons with disability through public awareness.

According to coalition members, to successfully implement the projects, besides the legal basis, it is also necessary to work with community concrete sectors.

According to the Coordinator for Inclusive Legal Reforms Sipan Asatryan, the goal of the workshop is to inform the NA Staff about the rights of the persons with disabilities and the ethics of communicating with the persons with disabilities.

As the participants assured, similar workshops, discussions will be continuous for the benefit of the inclusiveness of the rendering services.