Enhancing Health care and Human Rights protection in prisons in Armenia

This 30-months project is part of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Armenia 2019-2022. It is implemented by the Council of Europe in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health and the Penitentiary Medicine Center.

The aim of the project is to further support the national authorities in reforming healthcare provision and human rights for sentenced persons in Armenia in line with the European standards.

Attention will be given to the following three areas:

enhancing regulatory and operational framework for provision of in line with European standards;
improvement of the material conditions and the provision of healthcare in prisons;
capacity building of the Penitentiary Medicine Centre (PMC).

The project will particularly focus on the improvement of prison healthcare services through introduction of new technologies in healthcare services, such as telemedicine and electronic database system of medical records, ensuring protection of healthcare rights of mentally-ill persons in penitentiary institutions, improvement of preventive healthcare, particularly sanitary-epidemiological and hygienic conditions and control mechanism, modernizing hospital/specialized medical care and services in the penitentiary institutions. Project activities should significantly contribute to improving effectiveness, transparency and accountability of penitentiary prison healthcare in general and the PMC in particular. Proper documentation and reporting on indications of torture, ill-treatment, inhumane and degrading treatment will stay in focus and addressed.

The amount devoted to this project is 750,000 Euros and its implementation started in November 2019 to end in December 2022.

Project documentation

Useful information

PROJECT NEWS

Back Q&A coaching session on piloting the toolkit on mental health and in-depth needs and risks assessment in pilot prisons in Armenia

Psychologists and psychotherapists from three pilot prisons (Armavir, Abovyan and Kosh) provided a positive feedback on the application of a toolkit on mental health needs and risks in-depth assessment, discussed the piloting process and decided on steps to improve and finalize the assessment.

The agenda of the session focused on discussion of questions raised by the medical staff, as well as on methodological aspects, inter-rater reliability of the tool and the impact on prisoners.

The statistics since the start of the pilot shows that 30% of cases from the total number of assessments with persons deprived of liberty upon their first entry have been directed to in-depth assessment. Two persons deprived of liberty were identified with mental health issues and transferred to the Prison Hospital as result of the application of the assessment within the last two weeks.

The main issue raised by the medical staff is the situation when a person enters the penitentiary institution at weekends when no psychologists or physiatrists are on duty. Representatives of Ministry of Justice and “Penitentiary Medicine Centre” SNCO who were present during the session agreed to organise additional consultations in order to propose solutions in this respect and address the issue.

The Q&A session took place on 12 November 2021 within the framework of the project “Enhancing health care and human rights protection in prisons in Armenia” implemented by the Council of Europe and financed by the Action Plan for Armenia 2019 - 2022.

Armenia 16 November 2021