BackUnder the new Constitution of 2015 the mandate of the Human Rights Defender (HRD) has been expanded by including the power to facilitate the improvement of the regulatory legal acts related to human rights and freedoms. Following the Constitutional Amendments, a new Constitutional Law on Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia was adopted in December 2016. Within this constitutional function, a new practice of drafting laws by the HRD Office is being exercised.
As a result of monitoring places of deprivation of liberty in the capacity of National Preventive Mechanism and examination of individual complaints by the Human Rights Defender, legislative gaps and inefficiencies in different normative legal acts have been revealed, which are in contradiction with international human right standards.
Accordingly, the HRD Office has developed and introduced for circulation a number of packages of draft laws, which aim:
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to strengthen the communication between prisoners and their family members, promoting and prioritizing prisoner’s reintegration into the society and preparing them for release,
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to grant long-term and short-term visits, as well as short leave to prisoners and detainees,
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to adjust the treatment towards the persons deprived of liberty on the individual approach based on latter’s behavior in the penitentiary institution, despite the type or gravity of the offence committed by them,
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to prescribe the right of detainee to receive identification card substantiated by the need to exercise her/his constitutional rights,
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to eliminating the inadmissible law enforcement practice when in the course of criminal examination a decision is made to forbid a detained person to meet her/his family members without justified reasoning,
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to impose such limitation only by a grounded decision of a higher authority based on reasonable motion of investigator, with a concrete period and obligation of periodic review,
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to ensure the immediate notification of the detained person and his or her attorney about this decision to ensure the opportunity to appeal it,
to make the liability for hindering the professional activity of a lawyer more severe, -
to consider more strict punishment for using the official position for the obstruction of implementation of lawyers’ activities, as well as foreseen punishment in a form of imprisonment,
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to prescribe a liability in the Criminal Code for hindering the professional work of a lawyer if it is manifested by illegally preventing a lawyer to enter any place of deprivation of liberty to meet her/his client.
The draft laws have been officially circulated among government, including law enforcement agencies and NGOs specialized in the field of prevention of torture and ill-treatment. They have also been published on the official webpage of the Human Rights Defender of Armenia and disseminated through media.
Final consultations are being held with the Government and the National Assembly to find the final ways for the adoption of the above mentioned legislative packages.
Source: Human Rights Defender, Armenia
