March 11 saw the official launch of the OSF-Armenia project “Enabling Civil Society’s Collective Monitoring and Advocacy to Pursue Credible and Systemic Reforms Entailed in the Armenia – EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA).”

Executive Director of Transparency International Anticorruption Center (TIAC), Sona Ayvazyan was one of the speakers at the event where she talked about TIAC’s efforts to contribute to the EU-Armenia collaboration agenda. “We have long been trying to somehow contribute to key areas of partnership between the EU and Armenia but the fact is that for a long time, the actual document of the Association Agreement and then later that of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement were not available to us and we were not able to get familiar with their contents in order to be able to be more constructive and push for significant changes,” Ayvazyan notes.

She also adds that in terms of anticorruption efforts and transparency of governance there are very general texts included which, according to Ayvazyan, has to do with the lack of the willingness on part of the previous government to fight corruption.

“Fortunately, we now live in a new reality and the government has initiated two key strategic documents – the Anticorruption Strategy of Armenia and the 2019-2023 Strategy for Judicial and Legal Reforms – which also center around provisions of transitional justice. The Corruption Prevention Commission has been established, clear objectives have been defined for the establishment of an Anticorruption Committee and Anticorruption Courts, etc. These are all ambitions plans,” says Ayvazyan.

The two-year project will be implemented by the Open Society Foundations-Armenia with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Georgia and Armenia. The project’s goal is to facilitate the adequate implementation of CEPA through collective monitoring and advocacy of civil society. Areas to be monitored include human rights, judicial reforms, electoral code reforms, fight against corruption, transparent and accountable governance, among others.

Original source: Factor