Dustrik Mkhitaryan, the head of the Politics and Democracy NGO, listening closely to the Armenian establishment’s assessment of the Rio+20 National Assessment Report draft at Congress Hotel today, said with surprise, “I didn’t understand which country this report was about – everything was good, everything was done.” A public discussion on this report with participation of NGOs was organized. Ms. Mkhitaryan offered to prepare a national alternative report, since there was no mention about internal and external challenges in the mentioned report. During a regular summit in Rio dedicated to stable development issues in July, we should put forward the given report on what achievements our country has reached, what drawbacks and challenges it faces.
“The internal challenge is emigration, one votes on this state with his feet today – we say poverty has declined, at whose expense has it declined, because they have left? I was seeing my sister off the other day and I was just short of crying – 70 families with old men, babies, with everything were living by that day’s plain. This is the internal challenge, this is our national security issue, if we don’t solve this issue, what else can we say then?” Dustrik Mkhitaryan said. She said pointing to the half-full hall, “We have more than 5000 NGOs, but there are less than 50 people in the hall. Why? Either they are only for show and they don’t think it is worth to come here and talk about problems, or all those organizations keep silent, because some of them get grants and have no right to raise problems.”
Movses Aristakesyan, the head of the Economic Rights Center NGO, who is also on the Armenian National Congress (ANC) list for proportional representation, expressed an opinion during a conversation with www.aravot.am, “This report aims at showing through falsification and clownery that the establishment does something, it is directed to the donor society, in order that they may give additional money and the establishment may use that money in illegal, oligopolistic interests, their, their grandsons’ and clan’s interests. Those include also grant-seeking NGOs that ostensibly participated in drawing up this report. The most important thing
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is that there isn’t the human, who the Rio+20 ideology is about, in this report and the most important problems of the human are poverty and unemployment. There is no secure physical environment these days, where people can work – that is why all that is reflected in emigration.”
Hakob Sanasaryan, the leader of the Greens’ Union, talking about one of his colleagues’ observation that the most important issue for Armenia was the Sevan problem these days, said, “Today the most important issue is the lives of the population.” Talking about the issues related to energy security, environmentalist Sanasaryan noted, “Is it in the national interest of the state to attach the energy fate of our country to atomic energy by building nuclear power plants? Of course, families that will make investments will receive benefits for 20, 30 or 60 years; afterwards, Armenia will have to think for hundreds of thousands of years how to eliminate radioactive waste from the environment as secure as possible.” www.aravot.am inquired from deputy minister of nature protection Simon Papyan whether he agreed with the mentioned problems, as a state representative and why those important issues were not included in the report. The deputy minister said in response, “Quite an interesting discussion is in progress, I think that we will complement the national report based on those proposals. There really are such issues, but I don’t agree with many conclusions – for example, I don’t agree that this report is not needed or is meaningless; this report has been prepared with participation also of NGOs. However, for example, it is the reality that overexploitation of resources, illegal deforestation, high level of poverty are there today and no one can deny it.”
Lusine BUDAGHYAN
