News

CRD/TI Armenia's Chairwoman Amalia Kostanyan participated in Transparency International (TI) Annual International Conference and Membership Meeting in Bali, Indonesia, from 25-29 October. The meeting brought together more than 200 delegates from over 90 national chapters around the world to exchange information, opinions and experience on poverty and development, political corruption, revenue transparency, civil society monitoring, corruption in defense and corruption in the judiciary as well as TI internal governance issues.

A press conference on territorial administration and local government in Yerevan city was held in Golden Tulip Yerevan Hotel on Wednesday, October 24. The event was supported by Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation-Armenia and conducted by Sona Ayvazyan, Executive Director of CRD/TI Armenia, Vahan Movsisyan, Chairman of Communities Finance Officers Association, Board Members Davit Tumanyan and Mkrtich (Sos) Gimishyan.

CRD/TI Armenia convened a workshop on "Electoral Processes in Armenia" at the Congress Hotel on Tuesday, October 16, 2007. Supported by Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation-Armenia, the event brought together MPs, representatives of non-parliamentary political parties, state, non-governmental and international organizations, as well as media outlets to present and discuss legal framework regulating electoral processes in Armenia.

On October 15, 2007 CRD/TI Armenia, Sksela initiative group and a group of citizens held a protest action in front of the government building in order to express dissatisfaction with the destruction of the wonder of nature, basalt columns in the Garni Gorge called "Symphony of Stones." The organizers of the action appealed to active citizens to join the demonstration and petition, file a complaint to the Prosecutor General urging the latter to take up immediate measures to prevent illegal actions, hold the guilty liable and provide compensation for damages.

The current situation of human rights in Armenia was discussed on Wednesday, October 10 at a press conference held in Golden Tulip Yerevan Hotel by Amalia Kostanyan, CRD/TI Armenia Chairwoman, Avetik Ishkhanyan, Chairman of Armenian Helsinki Committee and Artur Sakunts, Head of Vanadzor Branch of Helsinki Citizen's Assembly. The speakers expressed concern on decline of freedom of speech in the past five years and claimed lack of human rights protection in the country.

CRD/TI Armenia held a press conference on September 26, 2007, at 2 p.m. Yerevan time, to present Transparency International 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released that day in London by the famous global coalition against corruption. The 2007 CPI, which drew on 14 expert opinion surveys carried out by 12 independent organizations looked at perceptions of public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories, the greatest country coverage of any CPI to date. The key speaker, CRD/TI Armenia Chairwoman Amalia Kostanyan introduced CPI 2007 findings and reflected on current situation in Armenia particularly with regard to implementation of Anti-Corruption Strategy Program.

The United Nations launched on September 17 a new partnership between the World Bank and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to help developing nations to recover assets stolen by corrupt leaders and invest those funds in effective development programs.
According to the UN News Service the Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, the Executive Director of the UNODC Antonio Maria Costa and World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick keynoted on the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative at the UN headquarters in New York.

Being turned into an ecological zone of disaster, the city of Yerevan, especially its Center faces a state of emergency, requiring to immediately take appropriate measures. It was mentioned during a press conference held on August 31 by Public Ecological Coalition of 32 NGOs. The speakers were concerned that "since it was out of control, construction business served not as much the interests of the city as the financial interests of a group of tycoons."

On July 26 the Public Ecological Coalition organized an action against construction in the Opera garden area by the Arno Babajanyan Statue. More than 100 representatives of NGOs, parties, international organizations and media took part in the event. Besides speeches at the protest, the representatives of the action filled in soil into the foundation pit. All the participants took part in this action under the motto "a handful of soil into your pit" except the policemen observing the event.

Between July 17 and 18 CRD/TI Armenia Chairwoman Amalia Kostanyan participated in a workshop on Access to Information/Anti-Corruption. Held in Navacerrada, Spain, the workshop and the community brought together a broad spectrum of diverse NGOs with a few common links. In some way supported by OSI, they all promote public access to state held information, and they all have demonstrated a commitment to curbing corruption in the countries in which they work.