In this in-depth interview, CivilNet sits down with former Armenian Minister of Health Arsen Torosyan, now a parliament deputy, to discuss the country’s ongoing healthcare reforms, COVID response efforts over the past two years, and prospects for continued progress amid political turmoil. Torosyan offers a candid status update across key issues including public health initiatives on tobacco control and nonprofit hospitalization.
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Advocates welcome landmark overhaul of Armenia’s domestic violence law
By Paul Vartan Sookiasian An overhauled version of Armenia’s domestic violence law went into effect Monday, a landmark move that the bill’s author and women’s rights advocates told CivilNet represents a crucial step toward combating gender-based violence in the country. As a result, advocates told CivilNet, many more people experiencing domestic violence in Armenia will have protection under the law and gain access to sorely needed resources. It marks the first time any significant changes have been made to Armenian domestic violence legislation since the original law was passed in 2017. The new package of amendments is the product of […]
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Freedom House deems Baku’s actions in Karabakh ethnic cleansing, urges
By Sonya Dymova In a landmark special report released Monday, Freedom House finds Azerbaijan’s actions in and around Nagorno-Karabakh since the 2020 war amount to ethnic cleansing and urged the International Criminal Court to study those violations. “The documented actions of Azerbaijan meet the criteria for ethnic cleansing as understood in the context of the former Yugoslavia conflict,” Freedom House concludes in the report titled “Why are there no Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh?” To that end, the U.S.-based watchdog also concludes Azerbaijan’s actions qualify as crimes against humanity and war crimes under the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International […]
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Armenia’s Amulsar gold mine may begin operations next year
By Mark Dovich Operations at Amulsar, Armenia’s long-stalled gold mining project, can begin as soon as next spring, a senior Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) official suggested Thursday, in a rare public indication of a timeline for a project embroiled for years in environmental and political controversy. A number of outstanding issues must still be resolved before production can begin, Senior Managing Director Denis Ilin told the ArmInfo news site, most importantly an EDB-led environmental impact assessment. Ilin told ArmInfo last May that the EDB’s decision to extend a multimillion loan to allow the Amulsar project to go ahead will hinge […]
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Armenian government stares down historic $1.2B lawsuit over Zangezur mine
By Mark Dovich Walnort Finance, a Cyprus-registered shell company that owns a 12.5% stake in the Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Combine, Armenia’s biggest mine, filed a $1.2 billion arbitration claim against the Armenian government last Friday — the biggest lawsuit the government has ever faced. In a filing with the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington, D.C., Walnort alleges that the Armenian government undertook a “politically motivated campaign” to deprive it of its “legitimate shareholder rights” and claims that it only brought the issue to arbitration after the government rebuffed repeated attempts to negotiate. The compensatory damages […]
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Baku’s targeting of cultural heritage in Karabakh hinders peace prospects
By Sonya Dymova In a report released this week, Caucasus Heritage Watch said the number of Armenian heritage sites destroyed in Nagorno-Karabakh skyrocketed since October 2023, a month after the forcible displacement of nearly all of the region’s Armenians. “We are deeply concerned that the total number of destroyed heritage sites rose by 75% between our Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 missions, along with a 29% increase in sites classified as threatened,” the report stated. Caucasus Heritage Watch, a project headed by scholars at Purdue and Cornell Universities, uses satellite imagery to monitor the area, as Azerbaijan forbids access to […]
