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In July-December 2020, a total of 176 lawsuits related to the media and journalists were filed with the courts in Armenia, of which 94 were submitted in 2019 and 82 in 2020. Out of those 176 lawsuits, 127 were accepted for proceedings (68 in 2019, 59 in 2020), the Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression (CPFE) said on Tuesday, presenting the results of its monitoring.

In the past two years, the CPFE, with the support of Justice for Journalists international organization, monitored court cases involving media outlets and journalists. The course of the examination of those cases, the arguments and the legal reasoning presented by the parties, the content of the judicial acts, as well as some statistical data were studied and analyzed.

The need for this monitoring was conditioned by the fact that 2019 was unprecedented in terms of the number of lawsuits against journalists and media outlets, and this trend continued in 2020, which caused serious concerns in the media. In addition, in the conditions of deep judicial crisis in the post-revolutionary period, such a study acquires a higher degree of topicality, the committee said.

This study was conducted to find out to what extent courts comply with the Armenian legislation, international legal acts, the rulings of the Constitutional Court of Armenia, the Court of Cassation and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), whether the courts apply the same approaches in their practice and whether judicial acts take into account the role of the media and journalists in a democratic society.

During the monitoring exercise, the cases on which at least one or more judicial acts were adopted were subjected to expert analysis. Hence, the total number of such case amounted to 21. It should be noted that the judgments on 12 cases entered into force, that is, the disputes were resolved, and in 9 cases more than one act was passed, but the court proceedings are still in progress.

Out of the remaining 106 cases, 5 (3 cases in 2019, 2 cases in 2020) were dismissed because the plaintiff withdrew the claims, in 2 cases a conciliation agreement was signed between the parties (both in 2019), and in 5 cases, the lawsuit was left without examination, on the grounds that one of the parties did not appear in two consecutive sessions (4 in 2019, 1 in 2020). As for the remaining 94 cases no judicial act was adopted as of December 31, 2020.

Based on the results of the monitoring, the CPFE has come up with legislative proposals.