As part of Armenia’s Civil Society Organizations (CSO) delegation Sona Ayvazyan, Deputy Director of Transparency International Anticorruption Center presented alternative report on human rights situation in Armenia before the international community during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) pre-session meeting on Armenia held in Geneva from December 2 to 4, 2014. The meeting was organized by UPR-Info in the lead-up to the UPR to be held on 22 January 2015, to assess to what extent Armenia respected its international obligations in human rights as state under Review.

The UPR Pre-sessions bring together Permanent Missions, National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to discuss the human rights situation of States one month prior to their review at the UPR Working Group. The Pre-sessions offer permanent delegations the opportunity to be informed on the status of implementation of recommendations made during the previous review, while providing space for civil society to influence the process by lobbying several delegations at once.

Among other speakers, Sona Ayvazyan said that a number of recommendations were received by Armenia during the previous review, and information should be provided how those recommendations were implemented. However, issues on cultural rights, right to live in a healthy and safe environment and right to property were not addressed during the previous review. CSOs claimed for those issues to be included in review.

As for electoral rights she insisted that the only guarantee to prevent the misuse of names and establish public trust in the electoral process will be publication of the lists of actual voters after elections.

UPR is a special UN procedure initiated on March 15, 2006 to regularly review the human rights situation in all the 193 UN member states. The review is based on the information processed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights summarizing the data provided in the National Report by the RA Government, reports by UN treaty bodies and other stakeholders (national and international non-governmental organizations). Upon completion of the regular review, the UN UPR Working Group prepares a report to sum up the results of the review, the human rights situation in the RA and recommendations on improving the situation. The first Universal Periodic Review of the human rights situation in the Republic of Armenia was completed in May, 2010, and the next one is scheduled for January-February, 2015.

For details see UPR-Info website