ArmeniaNow  --  This year has been marked by unprecedented persistency and activity of civil society and human rights organizations due to which a few scandalous cases have been revealed, investigated and the wrongdoers punished.

Ombudsman Armen Harutyunyan resigned in 2011 and the Armenian parliament elected a new ombudsman – Karen Andreasyan.

The beginning of the year shocked the country with a scandalous case of child sex abuse: a formerly reputed American-Armenian businessman-philanthropist was accused and later convicted (15 years of imprisonment) for sex abuse of 10 young boys. This provoked heated discussions among NGOs and lawmakers leading to a draft law on voluntary or compulsory chemical sterilization as punishment for this crime.

2011 also saw a number of law suits brought by high-ranking officials and parliamentarians against oppositional media representatives for publishing articles “offending their honor and dignity”. Editors of the target media appealed to the Constitutional Court of Armenia, encouraged by the new Ombudsman’s similar act, asking to declare the law on insult and slander anti-constitutional. The court, however, ruled that the disputed law did not contradict the Basic Law.

International organizations criticized the Armenian authorities for their pressure and persecution of local media and journalists.

Women started voicing the issue of domestic violence more actively, in order to stop being victims of physical abuse in their own families. NGOs formed a coalition and held joint events to draw public attention to the issue. The recent case of brutal treatment of a young woman by her husband and mother-in-law and the arrest of the offenders is viewed as a victory in the field that could set a precedent.

Non-combat death cases in the Armed Forces of Armenia continued with disturbing consistency in 2011. Three soldiers died in the month of October alone. Civil society and human rights watch-dogs raised a wave of protest and demanded resignation of a number of officials. Parents of soldiers who died while in the army over the past several years continue their weekly acts of protest in front of the government building.

Life-sentence prisoners in Armenia have initiated and drafted a report raising the issues they are facing in their predicament and suggesting solutions that could improve their living conditions at penitentiaries. Human rights organizations held monitoring and revealed that prisons in Armenia are overpopulated.

The Freedom of Information Center of Armenia (FOICA) has published its “blacklist” of officials who, it says, have recently violated the right of the provision of information.

In December FOICA presented a large-scale analytical report called “Freedom of Information in the Republic of Armenia: 2011 Monitoring”.

The end of the year has been marked by news that apartments in some of the newly-built multi-storey dwellings in Yerevan have from three to five buyers, who are now fighting for their ownership rights.