On February 26, 2024, the Ministry of High-Technology Industry released a draft of a new law “On Public Information” as well as amendments and additions to related laws, for public discussion. According to the government, this law will serve as a basis of implementing open data policy, and in particular, enable public oversight over the performance of state and local self-government bodies. The new draft defines: the conditions and procedure for providing public information; the methods of ensuring access to public information and managing its usage; and how to regulate the collection, processing, use of information, establishment of databases and their management.
The Administrative Court of the RA satisfied the claim of the Transparency International Armenia NGO against the Staff of The National Assembly, recognizing not legitimate the latter’s activity to refuse the participation of the plaintiff’s representative as an observer at the interview stage of the competition for the vacancy of the member of the Corruption Prevention Commission. The TI claimed that its rights to seek and receive information, guaranteed by the RA Constitution, had been violated as its right to conduct observation mission over the contest had been restricted. Genya Petrosyan, Davit Gyurjyan, and Sergey Grigoryan, lawyers and attorneys at the Law Development and Protection Foundation represented the TI in the court.
On March 7 of this year, a large-scale peaceful protest action was held in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, against the adoption of the so-called "Russian law". Despite the negative assessment of that law by a number of international organizations and the civil society of the neighboring country, the Georgian parliament, nevertheless, adopted the controversial law "on foreign agents" on first reading.
