Opinion on the RA Judicial and Legislative Reforms Strategy for 2019-2023

On September 10 of 2019, Protection of Rights without Borders NGO elaborated and presented an opinion on “Confirming the RA Draft Government Decree on Judicial and Legislative Reform Strategy and its Action Plan for 2019-2023.

The Organization highly appreciated the readiness of the RA Ministry of Justice in strengthening the independence of the justice system in Armenia.  Nevertheless, according to the presented opinion separate strategic directions and their content need additional improvement. Particularly, the Strategy unites a number of objectives: the logical connection and the its influence as an outcome of its implementation are not presented in the reforms of the justice sector. From this perspective, the implementation of the Strategy distributes the problems disproportionately, decreasing the highlight of the problems, on which the complete reform of the judicial and legislative system is dependent upon.

The Strategy highlight 18 main directions, the majority of which is a repetition of the previous strategies. Extended list of directions is welcoming, but according to the experience of the previous implementation projects, not all the directions become realizable for the mentioned period. In this regard, it was recommended to decrease the mentioned directions and make the Strategy more realizable in terms of implementation.

Overall recommendations presented on the Strategic Project by the Organization

• Before the implementation of the new strategic plan, conduct an evaluation on the implemented project during the previous 15 years, raising the main achievements, reasons for failures and review the new Strategy based on the mentioned criteria.
• Define a scheme for the performance, impact assessment and accountability of judicial and legal reform programs, including the

Define performance and impact assessment and accountability criteria for judicial and legal reform programs, including reporting periodicity of accountability.

• Elaborate and present the necessary budget for the intendent events a part of the project.
• While defining the problems of the project and its action plan, conduct a situation analysis raising concrete problems and accordingly offering realistic solutions for them.
• Within the scope of the new project, define a realizable measure of the activities ensuring realistic outcomes.

The complete version of the opinion elaborated by the Organization and its relevant recommendations are available with the following link.

Opinion on the RA Judicial and Legislative Reforms Strategy for 2019-2023