Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Hrair Tovmasyan Looking Forward To Increased Confidence For Justice Over Coming Years
The government press center hosted today Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia Hrair Tovmasyan who briefed the journalists on his ministry’s priorities and upcoming plans.
A strategic action plan was said developed for the period 2012-2016 in an effort to reduce the level of public distrust towards justice at least twice from the current 70%-80% to 30-40%.
“The program implies a number of key targets: clearing up of prosecution-related procedures, application of judge performance assessment mechanisms and ruling out any misuse of suspended sentences,” Mr. Tovmasyan said adding that transparency, responsibility and evaluation mechanisms should be prioritized if we are to identify and understand the reasons behind judicial errors.
Tovmasyan reported that a European Court of Justice expert group has been set up under the Ministry to examine such rulings of the European Court of Human Rights as may have to do with our country. The objective is to tackle within 3-4 years those legislative gaps behind Armenia’s failure to gain cases brought before the ECHR.
Another key priority is to raise the level of services and curb the bureaucratic red tape.
According to the Minster, public service delivery offices will be set up in the near future where the citizens will be served for a maximum of 10 minutes while getting passports, implementing notary transactions and legal person registrations and so on.
“The foregoing services will also be available online. These offices are supposed to provide 80-90 percent of those services currently delivered by the system of the Ministry of Justice,” Mr. Tovmasyan said.
Details available in the audio material
