Armenia’s Defense Ministry Unlawfully Deprived MIA Soldier’s Mother of Allowance, Court Rules

The Administrative Court in Yerevan overturned on Monday an Armenian Defense Ministry decision to stop paying survivor’s pension to Abovyan resident Svetlana Sargsyan whose son went missing in action during the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 1992. The court, presided over by Judge Karen Avetisyan, has obliged the Ministry to reinstate Sargsyan’s full allowance.

In addition, the court has found the Defense Ministry refusal to hand over Sargsyan’s pension case to the State Social Security Service of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs unlawful and ill-founded.

Note, Sargsyan had been receiving the pension since November 2001, based on a Defense Ministry document that officially declared her son missing in action. In 2014, however, the payments were discontinued, since the Ministry decided that the woman was not in fact eligible for the pension. Sargsyan, officials insisted, lacked a reference from the commander of her son’s military unit about the place and time of the MIA soldier’s death.