Armenia’s Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) Arman Tatoyan on Saturday deplored a government-drafted bill which would cut the funding of the Ombudsman’s Office as “discriminatory”.
"It seeks to cut only the funding of the human rights defender," Tatoyan told a news conference on Saturday.
Examining the financing of other state institutions, the Ombudsman's Office found out that there are ministries which receive 9 billion drams, 32 billion drams, 211 billion drams and 200 billion drams. There are institutions independent of the government, which have funding in the amount of more than 1 billion drams. There are independent bodies, the funding of which has increased to over 100 million drams, the ombudsman said.
Arman Tatoyan highlighted the increase of complaints filed with the Ombudsman's Office, noting in 2015 they received 5,214 complaints, while in 2020 – almost 15,000 complaints.
"In the first two months of this year alone, we received 3,000 complaints. In 2020, we received 300 complaints per month for a while. In 2020, we received 12,000 calls only through the hotline. These numbers do not include our visits. The issues that received positive solutions also increased several times," Tatoyan said.
He stressed that after the 2020 war in Artsakh the workload of the Human Rights Defender's Office has increased dramatically, covering new issues and areas, including issues related to prisoners of war, missing persons and Armenia’s borders.
"Can you imagine how overloaded we are? Complaints about all the ministries and state structures are filed to us," he said.
Tatoyan reminded that earlier the government had taken some of the official cars from the Ombudsman's Office.
"At first, the government proposed to take 8 cars, most of which were purchased through EU funds. Then, without waiting for our opinion, to be honest, I delayed because of the heavy workload, it was decided to take 7. It made 70-80% of our cars. Such a decision would create serious obstacles, thus a decision was made to take only 3," he said.
Tatoyan underlined that they use these cars to visit psychiatric institutions, boarding schools, penitentiary institutions, children's homes, border settlements and police departments. Moreover, in most cases, these visits are confidential.
“In addition, our drivers are obliged to keep secret the findings and our discussions in the cars … There are completely different principles here,” he said.