ArmInfo.The Office of the RA Ombudsman presented an extraordinary report "On the state of Armenia's fulfillment of its obligations under the UN Convention and relevant protocols on observing children's rights."
Armenian Ombudsman Arman Tatoyan, opening the discussion and presentation, stressed that the report voiced the question of the existence of systemic prerequisites for protecting the rights of children in the country. "The study found that the conditions for keeping children in special institutions are better than at home, and some parents for this reason refuse to give children." The report places emphasis on the return of children to families, since it is extremely important for the child to grow up in the family. In rural areas, this problem becomes particularly acute, and the report pays attention to issues related to the quality of education provided, the conditions in schools, the salary of Itel, which did not rise for several years, reducing the workload of schools, the criteria of recruitment of teachers, but would like to emphasize that the most sensitive issue is the inability of the child to receive education because of a disability," Tatoyan stressed. In this context, he added that the subsidies in the sphere of education and medicine of Armenia did not grow since 2013.
The representative of UNICEF Yerevan office Tanya Radochai, speaking about the situation with the rights of children in Armenia, noted that it can not be demarcated into black or white. According to her, we need a delimiter that will allow us to look at the situation from the outside and to understand whether the movement is moving in the right direction. "Some proposals on the rights of children from Armenia have been implemented in part, others have not been implemented at all." In my opinion, the most important priority is the creation of a coordinating body for general policy and financing - this condition has not been fulfilled," Radochai said, and in this context added that this negatively affects the overall situation. Moreover, according to the representative of UNICEF, the Armenian government does not fulfill its obligations to monitor the situation regarding the observance of the rights of the child, and as an illustrative example, children from low-income families who do not attend general education institutions. At the same time, Radochai expressed conviction that solving problems related to children's rights requires not so much a finance as a coordinated long-term approach.
The extraordinary report "On the status of Armenia's fulfillment of its obligations under the UN Convention and relevant protocols on observing the rights of children" was drafted with the assistance of UNICEF. The report covers the period 2013-2017. To prepare the report, the reports of previous years, reports of public organizations, including alternative ones, were studied, interviews and interviews were conducted, judicial acts, administrative decisions, publications in the media, messages in social networks were studied. The report is designed to answer the question of whether the state fulfills its obligations or not, and specific answers and proposals are given for each sphere.