On 6 March, 13 representatives of civil society organisations participated in a training to get acquainted with the recent amendments to the new law on non-governmental, which was organised in the framework of the EU-funded “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project.
Notably, major part of the participants were women.
Miss Mary Harutyunyan, Lawyer of the “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project conducted the training. According to her, a number of legal regulations have been amended, related with the statutes of organisations and their names.
“There are often cases when the NGO wants to decide its name or make a change in its name, and there is a question: whether the word “Armenia” can be used in its name or not. Until 2018, the NGOs could not use freely the word “Armenia” and, in the case of use, it had to definitely preserve the order established by the government,” she said. The lawyer noted that after the changes made this year, the organisations were free to use not only the word Armenia, but also the phrase “Republic of Armenia”.
“I think the effectiveness of the course, is on a rather a high level. Awareness of any changes is important for public organisations. The issues related to changes in regulations, procedures, etc. are extremely important,” Ms Anna Grigoryan representative of “Mission Armenia” NGO told us during the interview.
“I was not aware of the changes. Changes to the NGO Law were presented briefly and professionally and these changes may directly refer to our organisation, and its growth,” Ms Aida Hambardzumyan said.
The “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by a Consortium of civil society organisations, which are the Armenian Lawyers’ Association (lead organisation), Agora Central Europe (NGO based in the Czech Republic), the Armenian Centre for Democratic Education-CIVITAS, the International Centre for Human Development, the SME Cooperation Association and the Union of Communities of Armenia.
