“One of the main issues which concerns Council of Europe is excessive use of force by the -authorities and the lack of effective investigation”, in an interview with Aravot.am said Christos Giakoumpoulos, Director of Human rights, Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law, Council of Europe.
He differentiated also effective functioning of jurisdiction: how effective they are, how independent they are, how much they can satisfy the expectations of the citizens. According to Christos Giakoumpoulos Armenia has positive developments in human rights protection: “We have the new Constitution, with increased guaranties concerned with jurisdictionally independence. We work on it, we will have more provisions and projects on the accountability of judges, on discipline of judges, on appointment procedures. So these are the developments which are very prominent.
The project that we are launching today concerning the human rights in armed forces of course is a pilot project. We believe that the armed forces behave better, when their own rights are better protected. It is an important conceptual project we are very satisfied that this initiative came from the minister of defense himself. Indeed, there are positive developments in this sphere and we really work hard”.
The project “Strengthening the application of European human rights standards in the armed forces in Armenia” has launched Monday, November 21st. The main objective of the project is to contribute to a better protection of human rights in the armed forces in Armenia. The specific objectives are to improve national capacity to apply European human rights standards in armed forces and to improve the prevention, identification, referral and handling of human rights violations in the armed forces, with a particular focus on ill-treatment.
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Ami CHICHAKYAN
