Civic Activities in Armenia and the Results

Tsovinar Nazaryan, a civic activist, “Army in Reality” civic Initiative

I think that the most advanced force in Armenia today is the civil society, because unlike the government and the authorities, the civil society has great expectations from the Republic of Armenia and consequently, thinks highly of the potential of the RA. In this footage we see the activists’ struggle for Teghut (a settlement surrounded with forests in the Marz of Lori where the second richest copper and molybdenum mine in Armenia operates – Editor‘s comment ), their condemnation of and protest against the violence at Harsnaqar (a restaurant in Yerevan – Editor‘s comment), where a group of military doctors were beaten by the bodyguards of an oligarch as a result of which one of them died. Here we also see the struggle for the Mashtots park (a public park in the center of Yerevan where the municipality intended to locate a number of shops and boutiques, but finally gave up their intention – Editor‘s comment), which lasted for quite a while and was a success to a certain degree, even though the civic activists were eager to see the successful resolution to arise from the legal aspect of their struggle rather than to be due to the President’s or any other individual’s aesthetic whims. I think that the civil society has been quite active so far and has reacted to those issues that our country constantly has to face. Now time has come for the activists – the civil society – to concretize their priorities and strategy, so that they act more efficiently, because the reactions are not enough. We need action; we need them to pull this country like a locomotive.

The experience of other countries must be taken into consideration, but first of all we should know that the circumstances in Armenia are different, this is another reality, and the recipes cannot be universal. I am deeply convinced that Armenia should learn not only from the rest of the world, should not only copy or duplicate someone’s experience, but should try to come up with its own ideas and models, models that can be good recipes to other countries, too.I suggest that if everything is wrong in the world, this does not yet mean that we must reconcile to this, and compare ourselves with more backward countries and say, see, thank God, acid is not thrown at the faces of girls who attend schools in Armenia (this is a means to prevent girls from attending school – Editor‘s comment). I cannot accept this approach; I think that we have sufficient potential to design new models and to help the world to revise its own approaches to human rights, business, the distribution of public resources and other issues.