On December 20 and 21, the Cooperation Programs Department of the Council of Europe held a training for the representatives of the Migration and Citizenship Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on ensuring the rights of displaced persons within the framework of the "Strengthening guarantees of human rights protection for the displaced population in Armenia" project.
Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Armen Ghazaryan was present at the workshop.
The Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs noted that nothing has changed in the Migration and Citizenship Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in terms of strategic goals.
The ISS will continue to provide a citizen-centric service, based on the application of the principle of value in public citizenship. The deputy minister noted that the fundamental principle in the field is the merit of the employee, in particular, the knowledge and skills, emphasizing that it is important to raise the qualifications of each employee. The service must have a competitive staff.
The heads of regional divisions of the International Civil Aviation Organization, representatives of departments and national experts from the Council of Europe, which organized the event, took part in the workshop.
The head of the Service, Nelly Davtyan, summarized the work done in 2024, noted that in 2023, all the challenges faced by the Service were overcome, and significant works in the direction of reforms were carried out in the Service for one year.
In particular:
• the works aimed at digitizing the process of issuing residence statuses have been started,
• The legislative project on the electronic system for obtaining and terminating RA citizenship passed the first reading in the National Assembly.
• the negotiations on the liberalization of RA-EU visas have started, • the digitalization process of the personal data of more than 300,000 Armenians forcibly displaced as a result of ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan in 1988-1992 has been completed.
Nelly Davtyan presented the outline map of the works to be carried out in 2025, referred to the expected problems.
National experts of the Council of Europe, Tatevik Bezhanyan and Sergey Ghazinyan, discussed with the participants the problems faced by the ICS departments in the provision of services to forcibly displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh (from queue management to content, from volume of transactions to addressing other bodies).
The employees presented the most frequently encountered obstacles in the scope of working with displaced persons, and discussed the options for their solution.
Nelli Davtyan, the head of the ISS, assured that the qualification workshops of the employees will be periodic in order to expand their professional abilities and practical knowledge.
