New draft proposes to establish social guarantees for public defenders

During the session of the Standing Committee on the Protection of Human Rights and Public Affairs of the National Assembly, Deputy Minister of Justice Levon Balyan submitted the draft “On making amendments and supplements to the Law of the Republic of Armenia “On advocacy””, which proposes to create legal grounds for the allocation of a sum from the State Budget in the amount of 15% of the payroll fund to the Office of Public Defender in order to pay for the overtime work performed by public defenders.

Levon Balyan mentioned that the need for adoption of the draft is conditioned by two key factors, that is, the steady increase of the workload of the Office of Public Defender that is recorded each year and the fact that the new Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes of the Republic of Armenia entered into force on 1 July 2022. Despite the recent increase in the number of public defenders (there are currently 69 public defenders), the current number of public defenders does not allow them to become engaged in overtime work.

According to the Deputy Minister, the Office of Public Defender is facing an issue, within the scope of which public defenders participate in investigative and other procedural actions as on-duty public defenders on non-working days and at non-working hours, including at night, that is, they perform overtime and night work, but they do not get paid extra for it. However, the right to additional remuneration in such cases is a guarantee enshrined by the Labour Code.

The draft proposes to allocate the sum only for overtime work; moreover, it will not be allocated to the Head of the Office and his or her deputies.

The Deputy Minister also presented data in figures, based on which, during the year 2021, within the scope of criminal proceedings, public defenders participated in investigative and other procedural actions as on-duty public defenders about 244 times during non-working days and at non-working hours, including at night (190 cases in Yerevan, 54 cases in the marzes (provinces)), and the number of on-duty activities during 2022 doubled, reaching 421, (307 cases in Yerevan, and 114 cases — in the marzes).

Based on the analysis conducted during the past 7 years (except for 2020), the number of criminal cases handled by the Office of Public Defender increased by 19% on average each following year, as compared to the previous year, and by 43% on average under civil cases. Currently, one public defender handles 210 criminal cases on average.

As a result of adoption of the draft, the expenses from the State Budget will increase annually by AMD 67,167,360.