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Court Monitoring This project is the follow up project implemented by the partner organization Bar Association of the Republic of Armenia (BARA). Current project is started from January, 2006 and still going on. The Project is financed by the OSI Assistance Foundation - Armenia. Project goal and short resume: Project has aim to develop methodology, ethical criteria and control mechanisms for court procedure process; to train group of graduate students and human rights NGO representatives to conduct monitoring in all courts of first instance and in Court of Appeal along the methodology and developed questionnaires and forms; to summarize the existing legal analyzes related to Armenian legislation and Article 6 of ECHR. The monitoring will be conducted on the implementation of Article 6 of ECHR in Armenian judiciary system. Systematic and thematic monitoring will be carried out during the project implementation. Systematic monitoring includes observation of courts’ activities in a specific time period. Thematic monitoring includes observation of court hearings of selected cases. The selected cases will cover corruption, trafficking, abuse of public power topics. The monitoring report will be published both in Armenian and English and distributed through all interested organizations. The discussions of the interim reports and their presentations will be organized in the framework of project. The international expertise will be provided during the project implementation.
Strategic Litigation in Caucasus Started from the second half of 2006 Armenian Institute for development has been implementing the project of "Strategic litigation in Caucasus". The project has as its target the South Caucasian countries like Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Above named project is going within the coalition of partner organizations. This coalition includes partnership of Netherlands Helsinki Committee (NHC) and the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights (Interights), as well as Article 42 and Legal Education Society. The project is financed by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Project goal and rationale: Overall objective of the project is to sustainably improve the implementation of national and international standards regarding the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in national legal practice and national law in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Specific objective is to ensure that a sustainable system of strategic human rights litigation is functioning in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Strategic human rights litigation is an important tool for the (legal) community to push for social changes and strengthen the rule of law. This tool is either unknown or underused in the regions. Input through the proposed programme can assist in enforcing important improvements in this field. Through this programme local organizations will be better able to perform strategic litigation in a professional and sustainable manner. Moreover, other stakeholders such as courts, legislature and executive bodies will receive input regarding international human rights law. All in all, this will contribute to the overall development of the rule of law and the application of human rights in practice. Strategic litigation achieves policy objectives through: - Interpretation of existing laws, constitutions and treaties to (i) substantiate or redefine rights (i.e. to clarify or change the law), or (ii) enforce or apply favorable rules that are underused or ignored. - Challenges to existing laws detrimental to social justice or individual rights (e.g. based on conflict with international or constitutional law). In order to use strategic litigation effectively local lawyers (private ones as well as those working with NGOs) should have the necessary knowledge, skills and resources to bring cases of human rights violations to national court and – if applicable – international ones. However, many lawyers and NGOs working in this field do not have sufficient knowledge, skills and resources to do so. Strategic litigation is a highly specialized technique that requires a combination of some constituents, such as: a) a network of lawyers with knowledge and skills, b) identification and selection of cases and c) financial resources. |
