The draft law on the reduction of funding for the Human Rights Defender and his staff, and, in fact, the draft on deprivation of financial independence, sent to parliament is unconstitutional. The Ombudsman of Armenia Arman Tatoyan stated this at a press conference on Saturday.

“If the law is adopted, I will appeal to the Constitutional Court to challenge the constitutionality of this law.

Moreover, I will submit a petition to suspend this provision, as it will cause problems from the point of view of democracy and legal security,” he stressed.

The Armenian authorities intend to deprive the Human Rights Defender of the constitutional guarantee of financial independence. Such independence is stipulated by the constitutional law, according to which the annual amount of allocations provided by the state budget for financing the Ombudsman and his staff cannot be less than the allocations provided by the state budget of the previous year.