On July 3, 2018, an event entitled “Right to Be Forgotten and Reports of Mass Media on Crimes as a Pretext to Initiate Criminal Cases” was held in the scope of the EU-funded “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project.
Representatives of the Ministry of Justice, the Personal Data Protection Agency, human rights defenders and civil society representatives, and experts attended the event.
“The essence of the right to be forgotten is that finding certain information about individuals is difficult or impossible, even if the information has been known to the public for many years. And a person demands that information be removed from the web site that hinders to his/her integration in the society and other rights,” Mr. Tigran Danielyan, Expert Lawyer of the Project said.
He introduced the origin of the right to be forgotten, the international jurisdictional precedents and the current applicability. The precedent experience of the media of realization of the right to be forgotten was presented as well. From June 16th, the Iravaban.net news website based on the application of a person, is editing the publications related with the latter that had been published two or more years before. Editing is done based on the application of an individual and based on the other defined criteria (removing the person’s identifiable information) and indicating that the material has been edited.
Ms Kristine Ghukasyan, Expert Lawyer of the Project, introduced the cases when and based on what procedures the media information are accepted as reports on crime and the criminal case is filed.
Mr. Gevorg Hayrapetyan, Acting Head of Personal Data Protection Agency, emphasized the event. “The right to be forgotten, as a rule, is not reflected in the laws of the states, but it is time for the society to think about it. And it is very good that this issue has already been considered and this new law will also be applied in practice.”
Participants of the event assessed the organization and information on this new law effective, taking into consideration the fact of frequent demands to the media to remove or edit publications.
The “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by a Consortium of civil society organizations, which are “Armenian Lawyers’ Association”, Agora Central Europe o.p.s (an NGO from the Czech Republic), Armenian Center for Democratic Education-CIVITAS, “International Center for Human Development” Public Organization, SME Cooperation Association and Union of Communities of Armenia.
The overall objective of the project is to enhance the influence of CSOs on the public policy process, and the specific objectives are to strengthen the ability of CSOs to build coalitions and focus on constructive and strategic policy engagement with local and central government partners. This will enable organizations (which already work in targeted coalitions) to acquire new resources, to join and encourage the civil society experts to engage in and encourage their participation in the formation of the local and national policies agenda; to identify common issues and priorities; and to address the government with constructive and strategic policy initiatives.
The project has a sub-granting component, under which grants will be provided to CSOs and CSOs Coalitions, which will be directed to the development of public policies and will have tangible results in 9 target areas, including justice, education and business.
