Ombudsman’s authorities extended (video)
The draft on amendments in the law on “Human Rights Defender” and adjacent laws is being discussed at today’s NA session. According to the draft, the authorities and the toolkit of Ombudsman are extended. Heritage Party lawmaker Tevan Poghosyan, addressing a question to Deputy Minister of Justice Arthur Hovhannisyan, who was presenting the draft, noted, “Can you explain more clearly whether after these changes the human rights’ situation will improve, the Ombudsman will be freer, more independent and whether new qualitative services will be provided.” The Deputy Minister noted that the draft will grant the Ombudsman new authorities, additional tools, “From this point of view, yes, the draft contributes to Ombudsman’s further activities, will help within the frames of prevention mechanism, so that the group of experts can enter penitentiary institutions without any obstacles. In this case the state institutions should be more alert and don’t create obstacles for Ombudsman’s activities.” Independent lawmaker Edmon Marukyan said that there is a mistake in the law; it is written that the Ombudsman is inviolable, including for his opinion in the National Assembly or voting and cannot be persecuted, but voting is the provision connected a lawmaker. Another observation of the lawmaker related to the fact that the official, who hasn’t provided documents to Ombudsman, is held accountable, “Examining international experience, we can amend it so that this issue be discussed in the independent body and solved, and there should be administrative accountability, as due to an official’s activities, human rights violation may have occurred, the person may be imprisoned for days, in this case disciplinary accountability is very weak.” He also noted that according to the law, Ombudsman can propose to the state body to hold the person accountable, “I propose to change that article and adopt that Ombudsman can propose the type of accountability, for example, dismissal.” Deputy Minister Arthur Hovhannisyan answered that they had noticed the mistake, the word “voting” will be removed.” As for other observations, he stated that they are waiting for the opinion of international experts and soon they will receive the conclusion of Venice Commission whether an official should be subjected to disciplinary accountability or not and whether Ombudsman himself can express his viewpoint on type of accountability.
