It has been a long time since the activities of the Law Development and Protection Foundation include monitoring and analyzing draft laws, revealing problems, and proposing solutions. In this way, the LDPF seeks to contribute to the formation of human rights-based legislation. Draft laws pertaining to the judiciary, elections, human rights, and open government are especially in the spotlight of the organization.
Recently, the Government of the Republic of Armenia has fully adopted the LDPF’s recommendations on improving the content of court statistics and has included them in the OGP-Armenia National Action Plan 2022-2024.
Before turning to the main recommendations, it is worth noting that the commitment “eCourt-statistics statistical analytical tool" envisages the introduction of the "eCourt-statistics" statistical analytical tool of the e-Justice system, which will automatically generate various valuable data on both judicial and pre-trial proceeedings under the section titled Open and Transparent Justice. As it follows from the Action Plan, this will make the work of the courts more transparent and more accessible, thus, increasing the effectiveness of public oversight.
The recommendations of the LDPF are oriented toward making the statistics on judicial cases as complete as possible, including such data that will provide a more complete and more meaningful picture of court activity.
First, one of the LDPF's recommendations led to all types of criminal court proceedings being covered by statistics. Accordingly, the brief description of the "eCourt-statistics" statistical analytical tool has been edited to include one more type of criminal court proceedings: warrant court proceedings.
Secondly, it will be possible to fully assess the entire duration of cases based on the clarification made in the Program with another recommendation of the LDPF. Prior to the amendment, the indicators (the number of court hearings and their duration) directed at revealing the duration of court proceedings did not enable to reveal the overall duration of the court proceedings (no indication on the period between the court hearings). It is noteworthy that the violation of the reasonable time of proceedings is one of the most frequent problems of the Armenian judicial system.
To sum up, the changes will allow the public and all interested parties to get a more comprehensive picture of the justice sector and take steps to address the problems outlined.
The activities related to the draft laws are conducted with the support of European Endowment Democracy (EED.)