Epress.am News from Armenia
Since 2010, oversight procedures in the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, which supervises the execution of European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judgments, have changed significantly, and with it changed states' obligations. According to the new procedure, after the ruling is in effect, within a maximum period of 6 months, the respondent state is obliged to present to the Committee of Ministers an Action Plan on what individual and general measures it plans to take to implement the judgments.
As told to Epress.am by attorney Ara Ghazaryan, in July 2013, the Government of Armenia had not presented its Action Plan in11 of the 38 cases currently overseen by the Committee.
"Of these cases, 10 are LEAD cases; that is, they are court rulings where the ECHR has observed systemic problems in national legislation and/or judicial practice and in this respect issued pilot judgments. Implementing judgments of such cases, consequently, requires more attention and acceleration; meanwhile, in this case, inaction is observed. In any case, this inaction isn't so strictly assessed by the Committee, since only one of the cases, Virabyan's case, has been moved to a stricter procedure, which is contrary to the adopted policy," he said.
According to Ghazaryan, Armenia also has not presented other necessary explanations about implementing ECHR rulings. For example, since 2010, the Committee has been waiting for information from the Armenian government on 5 cases of violations when individuals are detained (by police), registered by the ECHR . It has been waiting for news of the results of a large-scale state program based on a presidential decree to renovate detention centers since 2004, especially those in Etchmiadzin and Armavir, since it was in these institutions that victims of the aforementioned cases were detained.
"In the cases of administrative arrest (Article 11 of the Convention), the Government of the Republic of Armenia hasn't presented the amendments to the legislation on freedom of assembly and association made after 2008 and whether applicants continue to be persecuted. The Committee is waiting for certain information it required in two of the cases," summed up the attorney.