In response to the question of Aravot.am according to him, what the Human Rights Defender’s role in the upcoming electoral processes would be and whether the Defender intended to play such a role at all, Karen Andreasyan, the Human Rights Defender, said they would certainly play a role in the electoral processes and would try to provide legal support to all citizens, trustees, any political force by any means possible, if their civil and political rights were violated, “By saying right to elect, I mean not only problems related to voting lists, but also possible violations of the law during the pre-election campaign, violation of the right to freedom of movement, freedom of expression and other violations like these that can be related to the electoral process and that will be the focus of our attention. People certainly expect some assessments of the whole electoral process and generally the condition of political and civil rights protection in 2012 from the Human Rights Defender and this project, the details of which will be made public soon, will offer us an opportunity to get more substantial facts and information to make adequate and objective assessments.”
Referring to our question whether the Human Rights Defender was going to monitor the whole electoral process and whether he had such function, the Defender said that if everything went right and the agreement on the project discussed by EU, OSCE and the Human Rights Defender’s office was signed, then yes, because the implementation of that project would also include some monitoring elements. “I am not talking about playing the role of observers, but about work, as a result of which we will gather such information that will be the basis for the statements and assessments of the Human Rights Defender”, explained Karen Andreasyan, the Human Rights Defender.
