Good governance

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, good governance refers to the management of the government in a manner that is participatory, transparent, accountable, effective, equitable and has regard for the rule of law.

Throughout its lifetime the Europe in Law Association has invested significant efforts in contributing to good governance in Armenia.

Since September 2014, ELA has monitored a number of contests held by various government institutions to fill in the vacancies for public service positions. These included the contests for the selection of civil servants, investigators and prosecutors.

In a number of cases ELA encountered problems created by some of the government institutions not willing to give ELA access to these contests. These included the former Civil Service Council, the RA Investigative Committee, the RA Special Investigative Service and the RA General Prosecutor’s Office. In all of these cases ELA contested the decisions of these institutions on barring ELA’s access to the contests and/or contest-related information before the RA Administrative Court. Only in one case ELA was successful in having the court to partially grant our complaint against the former RA Civil Service Council. In the rest of the case in view of the fact that the Court rejected ELA’s compaints ELA had to file appeals against these decisions to exhaust the domestic remedies. Currently, in several of these cases applications have been lodged with the European Court of Human Rights, ELA arguing violation of the organisation’s right to receive and impart information under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

ELA has several other cases against a number of other government institutions having denied ELA  to information on public interest, such as the State Revenue Committee having denied ELA access to information on the spending of ‘fake’ observer organisations on the thousands of observers they deployed during the 2017 parliamentary elections.

ELA has invested significant efforts in trying to obtain the signed voter lists following the 2015 Constitutional Referendum. In view of numerous reports from ELA’s and other independent observers working in polling stations regarding electoral fraud, ELA believes that access to the 2015 referendum signed voter lists will shed light on the scale of electoral fraud committed by the former authorities during the referendum.

In the post-Velvet-Revolution Armenia ELA will continue its efforts in the area of raising the transparency and accountability of public institutions and otherwise contribute to ensuring good governance in Armenia.