On 15 August, Minister of Justice Artak Zeynalyan and Deputy Minister Suren Krmoyan met with the Mr. Karen Zadoyan, the EU funded “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project Manager and the representatives of the CSO coalitions that had received funding within the framework of the project, who are currently implementing projects on the improvement of evidence-based public policies in the areas of justice and human rights in the scope of the “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project.
The meeting was aimed at the presentation of these programs and achieving a co-operation agreement for their effective implementation.
Karen Zadoyan noted that the objective of the “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project is to strengthen the impact of CSOs on the public policy process, as well as their capacity building in coalition building and development of public policies in the context of development of constructive and strategic partnerships with the central government and local self-government partners.
Further, Mr Artak Kirakosyan, “Step towards Just Armenia” Project Manager said that “Support for Probation” National Network (which consists of 4 NGOs from Yerevan and marzes) is implementing the project. He also spoke about the development of a universal module for monitoring and evaluation implemented with participation of institutionalised CSOs in target areas; development of constructive and strategic partnerships in the policy-making process with regional territorial divisions of probation, judges and central government bodies; identification of problems in probation and early release areas and elaboration of relevant policies.
Ms Zhanna Alexanyan, “Human Rights, Monitoring and Publicity” Project Manager (the project is implemented in Human Rights sector) said that the utmost objective of their project is to promote human rights protection in three ways: reducing threats to human rights, protecting the rights of persons with disabilities (a tool to monitor the services provided to persons with disabilities will be developed); protection of the rights of persons in closed institutions – the rights of the servicemen and the detainees, and exclusion of torture.
Minister Artak Zeynalyan welcomed the implementation of such programs and stated that the Ministry of Justice greatly appreciates the resources of the civil society and is willing to cooperate.
The “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by a Consortium of civil society organisations, which are the Armenian Lawyers’ Association (lead organisation), Agora Central Europe (NGO based in the Czech Republic), the Armenian Centre for Democratic Education-CIVITAS, the International Centre for Human Development, the SME Cooperation Association and the Union of Communities of Armenia.
The project aims to enhance the influence of civil society organisations (CSOs) and CSO coalitions/networks on public policies in Armenia. This will allow organisations that are already working in sectoral coalitions to access additional resources, new groups of civil society experts to come together and encourage place their causes on the local and national policy agenda, to identify common concerns and priorities and approach government bodies with constructive and strategic policy engagement initiatives.
The project will provide sub-grants to CSOs and CSO coalitions for developing public policies and bringing significant changes in the 9 target sectors selected within the project, including those of justice, education and business.
