Shortcomings and problems identified

• The Ministry has not carried out a proper control over the assurance of project documents’ compliance with the urban development norms.
• Most of the buildings under construction are not available for people with disabilities.
• Proper supervision has not been carried out towards the community leaders’ obligations to prevent and suspend arbitrary constructions, and eliminate the consequences.
• Different organizations licensed by the Ministry gave different conclusions to citizens on the level of emergency of the same building.
• There are profound complaints concerning the process of re-registration in the lists providing special housing in the disaster zone areas.
• The RA Law “About Control and Supervision of Urban Planning Activities,” as well as a law “About Architecture” have not been adopted.

Positive developments

A number of law drafts and sub-acts were introduced to the RA Government by the initiative of the Ministry, which aim at definition of the joint requirements and standards and urban planning activities carried out by RA communities in territories subject to specific regulations, at optimizing the functions of construction documents coordination, reductions of terms of their implementation, increasing the effectiveness of fighting against arbitrary construction, reduction of the terms of documentation procedures of exploitation of a completed construction, etc.

Karen Andreasyan,
Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia

The list of the identified positive developments, gaps and shortcomings is not exhaustive. The introduced Chapter (25) of the HRD Annual Report 2011 is available in full at http://pashtpan.am/pages/downloadPdf/file_id/635.

The HRD Annual Report 2011 was developed based on the complaints received by the Staff of the Human Rights Defender, legislation analysis, trustworthy and non-disclaimed publications in press, reports of the international and local organizations as well as information received during the interviews with field specialists and human rights defenders.