Over the past couple of days, female government officials have been stressing the fact that there is hate speech against them and that they are being intimidated, but there is no response from the Office of the Human Rights Defender. This is what deputy of the My Step faction of the National Assembly of Armenia Lusine Badalyan said as she addressed Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan in parliament today.

Lusine Badalyan asked Tatoyan if a female opposition MP has an advantage over a female MP of the ruling party in response to Tatoyan’s statement that “the issue concerns a woman, and a woman opposition MP at that”. However, Tatoyan said he had never said the opposition has an advantage over the authorities.

“When we’re talking about the authorities and certain officials, it’s not the job of the Human Rights Defender to protect them. The law states that state bodies and local self-government bodies can’t address the Human Rights Defender with such issues,” he said.

Badalyan responded by saying that the Human Rights Defender needs to be more focused on the protection of rights from now on. “Certain layers of Armenian society are totally unaware of the Constitution of Armenia, particularly the third chapter. I believe there is a need to make efforts to advocate equal rights and, in general, to present certain points of the Constitution to the public,” she said.