Yesterday the 19 June, 2014 was a notable day for the Women's Resource Center. It was the honored guest of Universal Rights Awards Ceremony where Lara Aharonyan received the award "The Woman of Courage" in the name of the Women's Resource Center for outstanding actions for gender equality and protection of women's rights. Universal Rights Awards Ceremony is an annual award ceremony which has 7 awards in its framework.
The event was co-organized with the United States Embassy, the Delegation of the European Union to Armenia, the British Embassy, and The Council of Europe's Office in Yerevan, the UN Armenia Office and the NGO Counterpart International.
Armenian government officials, foreign diplomats, NGO representatives, and the press attended the Ceremony.
The award was granted to Women's Resource Center as a courageous organization which has gone through a lot of challenges while protecting women's rights. Despite the numerous threats and recent attack on it Women's Resource Center continued the fight for women's rights and women's empowerment and has achieved success.
Moreover the Women's Resource Center is the only organization among the winners this year representing the civil sector working for women's rights.
In her speech Lara Aharonyan stated: "This is not only the Women's Resource Center's victory, but also its members, partners and friends. We are thankful to all for their support, trust and partnership. "
Reminder that back in December 2013 there were serious changes in the chapter 18 of the Penal Code of The Republic of Armenia, which were initial in stringent of the penalty for crimes against sexual integrity, particularly the crimes committed against minors. These legal reforms were initiated and elaborated by Women's Resource Center, whose broad awareness campaigns and activities carried out at the state level with the apologetics of the draft were adopted by the National Assembly and was given the force of law.
Recall also that the Women's Resource Center recently has overcome a number of obstacles in its path.
In 21th of March, 2012 the website www.zaruhi.com published a website category available to the general public. R.Tatoyan published an article named "family destroyers", which contained misinformation about WRCA's activities and services aimed to harm WRCA's professional reputation as well as made offensive remarks such as "grant suckers", "family destroyers".
Women's Resource Center NGO addressed the media after acquaintance with the publication and was denied its request for disclosure and apology, which remained unanswered.
Later The Women's Resource Center filed a claim for a public apology in a court with 500.000 AMD compensation claims on 25th of April. The Court of First Instance satisfied the NGO's complaint and obliged "Zaruhi Publishing House" LLC and R.Tatotyan to publicly apologize and pay the compensation of 50.000 AMD. The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict only for the journalist R.Tatoyan (Civil Case No. EAKD/0642/02/12)
The media has refused to implement the decision of the court's final judgment and the journalist admitted his mistake and has entered into a settlement agreement with the plaintiff, pursuant to which the apology was published in a form of a comment in the website www.zaruhi.com, as well as "Women's Resource Center" website.
Returning to The Universal Rights Awards it is important to note that there were other organizations, ministries and initiatives receiving awards along with the Women's Resource Center.
The awardees were:
Lawyers Artak Zeinalyan and Ara Ghazaryan were presented with the Freedom Defender Award for their human rights work, while a group of activists who organized a campaign against rising public transport prices received the Civic Activism Award for their efforts in ensuring transparency and accountability in public decision-making.
Hetq.am received the Media Excellence Award for their consistent investigative reporting and coverage of the human rights of life-term prisoners.
The Local Government Reformer Award was presented to Head of the Karahunj community Lusine Avetyan. Laura Movsisian, Director of the Paediatric Rehabilitation Centre in Yerevan received the Community Service Award for her outstanding efforts in working with children with disabilities in Armenia.
Women's Resource Center congratulates all the winners and thanks to the organizers of the event for initiating such a beautiful and productive day.
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