The NGOs, which are deprived of appealing the permissions to exploit Teghut in court, discussed the issue in the UN Economic Commission for Europe a few days ago.
According to lawyer Artur Grigoryan, a member of the Teghut Protection civil initiative, the issue was discussed in the commission on September 25, attended by members of the civil initiative, the Ministry of Nature Protection and the company exploiting Teghut, Vallex. According to the member of the initiative, the latter participated on behalf of the state, “The state cannot be represented by a private company, but in this case, the state invited the representative of this mining company to represent Armenia along with it. This is a violation of Article 2 of the Convention and we raised that issue in the commission, they promised to find an official solution to the issue.”
In A. Grigoryan’s words, the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee will make a decision in December on the fact of depriving them of possibility to appeal the permissions to exploit Teghut in court. He thinks that the committee’s decision will reassert once again the violation of the Aarhus convention by the Armenian government.
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When asked what the civil initiative would gain from that decision, A. Grigoryan said, “The President, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs are personally responsible for fulfilling international obligations. We will have a document, with which we will make those officials fulfill the international obligations.”
We will publish the comment of the Ministry of Nature Protection on the meeting in the short-run.
Arpine SIMONYAN
