Today, Prosecutor General of the Republic of Armenia Anna Vardapetyan participated in the joint extended session-conference of the Public Council on Women’s Rights under the Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia and the Council on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Persons Belonging to National Minorities under the Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia.

The event was attended by Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia Anahit Manasyan, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Armenia Maxime Longangue, Deputy Head of the Cooperation, EU Delegation to Armenia Vaclav Sterba, human rights defenders, representatives of national minorities and non-governmental organisations, and others.

Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan expressed gratitude to the Human Rights Defender for inviting her to participate in the conference as a speaker and, addressing the topic of the event, noted that as early as 2025 she had instructed the competent unit of the Prosecutor General’s Office to conduct an analysis to determine how many criminal proceedings based on discrimination were pending in the Republic of Armenia.

“It turned out that there were three criminal proceedings. This does not mean that this crime does not exist. It means that we do not see this crime. Here, as Prosecutor General, the challenge for me was to teach prosecutors to recognise crimes committed on the grounds of discrimination, and in order to learn to see them, we had to change our perspective and change the educational channels through which our prosecutors received continuous training. Summarising the training conducted in 2025, we have a different picture: 24 prosecutors participated in seven training sessions on crimes motivated by hatred, organised in cooperation with the Council of Europe, the Office of the Human Rights Defender, the OSCE/ODIHR and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. In cooperation with our partners, we translated and provided prosecutors with guidelines, and we are consistently ensuring that these documents are applied in prosecutorial work. Naturally, this one year of work could not immediately ensure a dramatic improvement, but based on the results of the first half of 2026, we already have twice as many criminal proceedings. This means that prosecutors have begun to recognise crimes committed on the grounds of discrimination,” Anna Vardapetyan noted, adding that quite a number of personnel changes had been made in the Prosecutor’s Office, as bringing new legal knowledge into the system was considered important.

“In terms of women’s participation, we have seen dynamic changes in the Prosecutor’s Office, but I will not specifically mention the figures today, because I myself have some reservations even about positive discrimination: I do not want to be a statistic,” the Prosecutor General of the Republic emphasised, adding that her formula for overcoming discriminatory treatment is professionalism. “It is true that there are no genderless beings in social relations, but in professional relations, in order to overcome any discrimination based on gender, we need to speak the language of professionalism. I believe that, from an educational perspective, this is the most important starting point,” Anna Vardapetyan concluded.