51st ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF JUDGES HELD IN YEREVAN
Noyan Tapan
Se p 9, 2008
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 9, NOYAN TAPAN. The opening ceremony of the 51st
annual conference of the International Association of Judges (IAJ)
took place in Yerevan on September 8. 216 judges from 53 countries
are participating in the conference. Armenia joined the IAJ in 2005.
The participants will discuss issues related to independence of
judicial power from executive power and to disciplinary liability of
judges, in partucular, the issue of initiating a disciplinary procedure
against a judge by the other branches of power. The conference will
last until September 11.
The election of the IAJ president and his deputies will be held and
the place of the next 52nd conference of the association will be
decided during the Yerevan conference.
The chairman of the RA Cassation Court Hovhannes Manukian attached
importance to the fact that a conference of IAJ, a structure promoting
the independence and efficient work of judicial power, is being held
in Armenia – for the first time in the CIS. He pointed out the fight
against corruption and the protection of the principle of everyone’s
equality before the law as the most important problems. In his words,
in order to fight effectively against corruption, it is necessary
that society place a social order, while political power display a
definite will. The chairman of the RA Cassation Court said that the
people’s trust in the judicial system is quite low, and the society
has serious doubts about impartiality and honesty of judges.
The sittings of the European Association of Judges, as well as of
the IAJ’s regional groups (Latin American, African, and Asian, North
American and Oceanian Groups) took place within the framework of the
conference. In the evening the guests went to the Tsitsernakaberd
Memorial Complex and the Genocide Museum to pay a tribute of respect
to the Armenian Genocide victims.