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Democracy Watch

Publications

Illicit Party Financing: How Civil Contract Circumvents the Law Without Consequences

By Tatev Ghazaryan   The Anti-Corruption Committee recently closed a criminal investigation into alleged illegal donations to the ruling Civil Contract (CC) party in 2022. The case, which had been opened on the grounds of large-scale unlawful campaign contributions, was terminated without any prosecutions. This decision, coupled with clear violations in CC’s financing process, raises serious concerns about the […]

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Democracy Watch

Armenia’s ruling party’s sexism problem

By Tigran Grigoryan and Tatev Ghazaryan On September 8, Armenia’s political discourse sank to a new low when Artur Hovhannisyan, secretary of the ruling Civil Contract faction, launched a personal and sexist attack against opposition MP Taguhi Tovmasyan during a press briefing inside the National Assembly. The incident followed Hovhannisyan’s interruption of Tovmasyan’s earlier press […]

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Publications

‘I Am the Government’: Pashinyan’s One-Man Rule Threatens Democratic Consolidation

By Tigran Grigoryan #DemocracyWatch – Armenia’s Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, has dismissed Liparit Drmeyan, the head of the Office of the Representative for International Legal Affairs. This move follows a public statement by the Prime Minister that Armenia will not comply with an emergency ruling from the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal. The ruling had ordered Armenia […]

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Publications

Assault on the Church: A Growing Danger to Rights and Democratic Values

By Aram Tadevosyan Democracy Watch – On May 29, during a government session, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, speaking about the condition of historical and cultural monuments, remarked that our churches are “turned into storage rooms”. “A person enters a church to have a spiritual experience, but instead sees someone’s old shoes, clothes, someone has brought their old […]

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Democracy Watch

Insults, Labeling, and Ethnic Hatred: Political Discourse in Armenia

By Aram Tadevosyan The use of divisive and offensive language by political actors is one of the main problems of Armenia’s political culture. Democracy Watch regularly addresses the use of targeted and insulting rhetoric by both the opposition and the government. Debates over any issue often shift to the personal realm, where mutual accusations begin, […]

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Publications

State-Sponsored Hate: How Armenia’s Ruling Party and Pro-Government Media Target Karabakh Refugees

The publication is available only in Armenian.

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Publications

Media Under Attack: The Spread of Hostile Political Rhetoric in Armenia

The publication is available only in Armenian.

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Democracy Watch

Torture at Police Station and Zero Charges: The Case of Tigran Ulubabyan

By Aram Tadevosyan On March 17, lawyer Roman Yeritsyan posted on Facebook about Tigran Ulubabyan being tortured by officers at the Lori Regional Police Department and being subjected to insults. Thanks to several media outlets, the incident received widespread public attention. The story of an individual’s rights violation quickly shifted to a broader discourse, from police […]

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Publications

Armenia’s Local Elections: When the Government Influences the Outcomes

By Tatév Ghazaryan Since the political shifts of 2018, Armenia has seen a surge in local democratic transformations. As in Yerevan, regions and communities needed to align with the new political reality by electing new local authorities. Concurrently, since 2016, communities have undergone a process of consolidation, merging into larger administrative districts. This restructuring introduced […]

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