Improving healthcare, protection of the rights of women and children at penitentiary institutions — CoE highly appreciates co-operation with Ministry of Justice

Deputy Ministers of Justice Levon Balyan and Karen Karapetyan participated in the sessions of the inter-agency committees of the Armenia-Council of Europe Action Plan 2023-2026 and the CoE-EU Partnership for Good Governance 2023-2027 held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The progress of implementation of the Armenia-Council of Europe Action Plan 2023-2026 (launched last year) and the CoE-EU Partnership for Good Governance 2023-2027 Armenia were summed up during the sessions, and positive results were recorded in the areas of the judicial and legal system, increase of effectiveness of justice, the fight against corruption and cybercrimes, biomedicine, improvement of healthcare at penitentiary institutions, development of the probation system and protection of the rights of women and children. The specifics of implementation of the programme for human rights protection in the sphere of biomedicine were also touched upon. Issues on guaranteeing prohibition of discrimination were also discussed; the activities being carried out for protection of the rights of national minorities, development of anti-discrimination legislation, prevention of hate speech and hate crimes were also discussed. The representatives of the Republic of Armenia and the colleagues of the Council of Europe attached importance to the existing co-operation in the anti-corruption field and expressed willingness to expand it, particularly within the scope of implementation of the 2023-2026 Anti-Corruption Strategy and the Action Plan arising from the Strategy. The European party highly appreciated the co-operation with the Ministry of Justice and expressed willingness to continue the effective partnership. The event was co-chaired by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia Paruyr Hovhannisyan and Director of Programme Co-ordination at the Council of Europe Claus Neukirch.