Armenia: new CSO Meter report provides recommendations on civil society empowerment

The challenges facing the CSO (civil society organisations) environment in Armenia relating to financial sustainability, meaningful participation, and insufficient state protection persist and require measures to be addressed, says the new CSO Meter report. 

The document was prepared as part of the EU-funded ‘Compass to Conducive Environment and CSO Empowerment’ project, implemented by the European Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL) and its partners from Eastern Partner countries.

The report says that in 2023 there was limited advancement in addressing the recommendations from the CSO Meter report 2022. As a result, to improve the CSO environment in the coming period, the CSO Meter advises the Armenian government, relevant institutions, together with CSOs and all other affected stakeholders, to prioritise in particular seven of the 29 recommendations, provided in 11 areas (five of these remain in place from 2022). They include the Ministry of Finance providing the definition of a “grant”, engaging CSOs in the early stages of policy development, and providing adequate protection from harassment and attacks against CSOs. 

In general, CSOs in Armenia continued their everyday activities through 2023, some of them with a higher focus on humanitarian and human rights issues, the report says. Since September 2023, a significant number of CSOs concentrated their efforts on helping people forcibly displaced from Artsakh, providing informational, psychological, social and legal support, implementing fact-finding initiatives on human rights violations, and raising funds to provide the basic needs of food, shelter, clothes, and hygienic goods. 

According to the report, the overall score for the CSO environment in Armenia did not change in 2023 as compared to 2022 (4.8 out of 7). The top three areas with the highest scores remain the same compared to 2022: Freedom of Association (5.7), Access to Funding (5.3), and Freedom of Peaceful Assembly (5.3), while the areas with the lowest scores are State-CSO Cooperation (4.0), State Support (4.1), State Duty to Protect (4.5) and Digital Rights (4.5). 

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