On September 30, 2022, after four-day trainings aimed at capacity building of NGOs on Justice Reform of RA held within the framework of the project “Justice Reform Monitoring in Armenia” funded by the EU a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by civil society organizations to establish a JUREMONIA PLATFORM for advocacy of Justice Sector Reforms in Armenia.
The goal of the Platform is to have a real contribution and influence of NGOs in Justice Sector reforms through the research and studies, monitoring, advocacy, and dialogue with decision makers.
Before signing the Memorandum, Arshak Gasparyan, the president of Social Justice NGO, briefly presented the project to the participants and the bodies implementing, managing and supporting it. The speaker spoke in more detail about one of the target actions of the project, the prerequisites for the creation of a justice sector reform platform, and the need to consolidate existing resources in this area. It was suggested to strengthen jointly the dialogue between the government and civil society, to have a direct contribution and influence on conceptual and strategic sectorial and document processing processes
4 directions of activity of the Platform were established:
1. Legal and judicial reforms
2. Prison and Probation Sector Reforms
3. Police Reforms
4. Anti-Corruption reforms
Arshak Gasparyan also detailed some issues of the organization of Platform activity. In particular, the Secretary ofPlatform which will be in charge of coordinating the issues on the Platform’s agenda, members’ participation, publicizing the Platform’s activities, etc and will be run by the “Social Justice” NGO for the next four years. Taking into account the highly active processes currently underway in various branches of the justice sector, an agreement was reached to meet at least once a month. In order to make the work more effective and systematic, the Platform will have four working groups named after the above-mentioned directions, where the most trained and experienced organizations or organizations with similar interests will be included.
At the end of the event, representatives of 17 organizations signed the memorandum. With a view to more NGOs engaged in the work of the Platform, the Memorandum will also be circulated among other organizations active in the Justice Sector.