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“ Dear chairperson, ladies and gentlemen,

We all know that Ombudsman's office plays a huge and crucial role not only in defending and guaranteeing the protection of human rights but also in breaking stereotypes and changing the mindset within the society. Armenian Ombudsman's Office, which has the highest status of “ A ’’ class for independent, impartial and efficient activity, has recently come up with an important initiative in the scope of fight against domestic violence. To combat discrimination, stereotypes, and target the named issues, the Human Rights Defender conducts and continues to initiate various projects with the support of such partners as CoE, UNFPA, USAID and EU, as well as field civil society organisations.

The main goal is changing mindset in regards to women’s role and promoting women’s full participation in decision making processes. At the same time the office of the Human Rights Defender of Armenia starts awareness-raising campaign on prevention of violence against women and in the family, as well as on respective laws with #against violence call. By combating violence against women and domestic violence, we create a strong family, a safe environment, and a healthy society. And in Armenian society the family is very crucial. But there can’t be a happy family when there is violence. The initiators are mostly focused on regions and actively use new technologies, as well as social media. Simultaneously, many celebrities are actively involved in the campaign and most importantly male actors showed great interest. Why I mention this? Because I do believe that men should equally fight against domestic violence and breaking the stereotypes about women. And only with joint efforts we can bring desired results.

As a result, here we obviously see the fruitful cooperation of Ombudsman office, international organizations, civil society reps, celebrities and, of course, Government.

To sum up I would like to restate that both the Government of Armenia and the National Assembly are determined to further on strengthen the institution of Human Rights Defender because the protection of Human Rights is a core value for us. ’’