By Annie Demirjian

It is quite shocking to see the pictures of handcuffed and peaceful demonstrators in the streets of Yerevan but for a Canadian it was doubly shocking for me to see the pictures of the Canadian artist Arsine Khanjian handcuffed and taken away at a Yerevan public square. Twenty some years after the fall of the Soviet Union, we hoped that gradually, the country will move more towards democratic system and respect for rule of law, moving away from outdated autocratic regime. Well, looking at these pictures that went around the world, it looks like Armenia is moving backwards and not forwards.

In 2009-2013, I worked in Armenia when I was heading the Democratic Governance portfolio for UNDP’s regional center. Like other post-soviet countries in the region, Armenia was struggling from many social, political and economic malaise. Agreed that the country is in a hostile neighborhood (and Syria, Chechnya conflicts are not that far away from their borders), but the home-grown problems of the country was astounding.  It was blatantly evident that the country had all sorts of corruption problems: oligarchyism imported from Russia, political cronyism, weak judicial system, poor human rights record – most specifically vis a women, elderly, children, and extremely weak and ineffective public institutions and administration at all levels – national regional and local. The list goes on….. In addition, there is a macho-machismo culture so outdated almost caricaturist, like the attitude of the country towards LGBT community.

But there were also many positive developments in the country. Armenia continued to have one of the most active, well organized civil society – from media, to NGOs, to women’s groups to community based organizations. In the absence of official, institutional checks and balances in the country, the media and the civil society organizations play the oversight role and are holding the government accountable – hence we see the daily demonstrations against the governing elite, clamoring for police, social and economic reform. But the Armenian civil societies alone cannot act as an oversight instrument and drive the reform agenda. These checks and balances have to be established and implemented from within and for that to happen the government has to have the serious political will to establish transparent and accountable governance system and institutions that can implement reform.

Last 20 years, many multilateral institutions have come to Armenia’s assistance to help establish decent, functioning and professional institutions and systems. Among them were EU, OSCE, WB, UN/UNDP and many others. Some of these international institutions paid lip service to Armenia’s public sector reform, others provided skeleton support that was meaningless, yet others tried and later gave up due to the absence of the political will to truly exert reform.  In my dealings with senior officials I worked with well-meaning officials who were committed to reform. On one occasion, after several false starts I worked with the office of the president to establish an anti-corruption mechanism and process based on the UN convention against corruption.

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