Contributed by: Women's Rights Center, Armenia National VAW Monitor 

Violence exists in Armenia too

Presentation of the “Stop Violence against Women” website and the Armenia National home page took place in “Marriott” Hotel yesterday.

The site was created by the initiative of the [Network Women’s Program] of the Open Society Institute and the organization [The Advocates for Human Rights]. The website contains information on domestic violence, sexual assault and sexual harassment, as well as trafficking in women and girls, and covers 29 countries, including Central and Eastern Europe, FSU and Mongolia. Each country has its own home page ... Materials are mainly in English and soon they will be translated into ... national languages. Each home page has a “news” section. According to Mrs. Susanna Vardanyan, President of the Women’s Rights Center (WRC), Armenia is almost always the first by the number of visits. S.Vardanyan said: “It is difficult enough to constantly collect information from NGOs and State structures dealing with the issue.”

The WRC has organized Mass Media Monitoring among 7 newspapers of Armenia, such as “Aravot”, “Haykakan Zhamanak”, Hayots Ashkharh” and so on. Information on violence against women is taken from the newspapers, then translated and placed on the national home page. Edik Grigoryan, the website moderator of the project, noticed that the number of articles on the issues was too small in September, probably because of the elections, widely highlighted by the newspapers. The participants talked about trafficking in Armenian women in Dubai and TurkeyAccording to the representatives of NGOs, the number of such women in Dubai reaches 1.500-2.000. Valery Mkrtoumyan, Head of the Department of International Organizations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Head of Inter-agency Commission on Trafficking Issues, disagreed. According to him, the data given by the embassies proves that the number of such women is around 200. He noticed that Government of each country wishes to lessen this number, while NGOs, on the contrary, wish to present it larger, to receive various grants. According to V.Mkrtoumyan, 67 women-victims of trafficking returned home last year from Dubai.

S.Vardanyan mentioned that True Stories of women subjected to violence are also placed on the national home page by the suggestion of the WRC. She gave an example: “In one of the remote villages of Armenia a husband threatened to throw his wife into tonir (A round clay oven in the ground), if she spoiled lavash (thin Armenian bread). So it happened. Accidentally one lavash fell into the tonir; and the woman was pushed there after. She has been taken to mental clinic after healing the burns.”

Source: Lousine Ohanyan“Aravot”, 201/2574/22, 22 November 2005 (Unofficial translation)