Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan participated in the conference entitled “Justice as a Tool for Achieving Fairness” organized by the Ministry of Justice. The event discussed current challenges in the administration of justice, the effectiveness of the judicial system, increasing public trust in it, the impact of legal reforms, as well as application of preventive measures. The issues of ensuring cooperation between law enforcement agencies and protecting human rights were also addressed.
The first part of the panel discussion addressed the challenges of maintaining reasonable deadlines for the examination of cases in courts, the impact of sectoral reforms on the effectiveness and deadlines for the administration of justice, the ratio of the speed of procedural actions of law enforcement agencies to that of judicial examination, the ratio of the right to judicial protection and the speed of justice in the context of procedural abuses.
The Prime Minister answered the moderator’s question about what the role of the Government and the responsibility of various actors of the judiciary should be in providing timely and effective justice to the citizens of Armenia. Nikol Pashinyan emphasized the importance of the discussion and considered it a little delayed: “I mean it would be good if we had discussed these issues several times during this period. I think that one of the reasons underlying the question is that in the Republic of Armenia, there is still a certain gap between justice and the sovereign, the people, both structural and substantive. Why do we say or why is there this question? Are justice and fairness the same thing, or should they be the same? By and large, when we try to think about this question, we see that in reality there is a problem in the formulation itself, but it is important to understand what is the reason that such a formulation and question can exist in our reality. I think one of the reasons for this is that justice in Armenia is not understood by many.”
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According to the Prime Minister, there is also a problem with the language of justice among the public: the legal community at some point begins to use vocabulary that is not accessible and understandable to the majority of citizens. “We say, why is justice delayed? Justice is not delayed, it just does not arrive. It is a continuous process, it does not come to an end. There are also internal, legal conversations. There are separate perceptions and understandings in the operational block, separate understandings in the investigative circle, separate understandings in the prosecutorial circle, separate ones in the judicial circle,” the Prime Minister noted.
According to Nikol Pashinyan, the only source of power in the Republic of Armenia is the people, and therefore, the people should also have the opportunity to understand what is happening with the institutions they have created, how these institutions work, what goals they pursue, what results they generate.
According to the Prime Minister, there is a problem of organic connection between the people and the legal order established in the country. “My assessment has been and continues to be, and during this time I have only become convinced of it, that the gap in that legal order depends on and is also connected with the fact that, in fact, in all constitutional referendums, there has been a certain public perception and conviction that, nevertheless, the officially recorded results of constitutional referendums do not express or do not accurately express the will of the people. I talk about it a lot, now in different places, when presenting the ideology of Real Armenia,” said Nikol Pashinyan, adding that these are issues that need to be thought about, and the need to hold discussions with such emphasis indicates that we have not yet reached the desired point in the country in this regard.
Prime Minister Pashinyan also answered questions from those present.
The Office to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia