Honorable Chair,

Distinguished Delegates,

Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is honor for me today to address this highly representative audience, audience that directly represents the people of nearly all nations across the globe.

The theme of this debate called “Parliamentary action for peace, justice and strong institutions” is far more comprehensive, inclusive, and broad then any speech can cover but I would try to stress several important points for all of us.

In these turbulent and changing times, especially when democracy & rule of law in countries like my home country Armenia, is being permanently challenged by external and internal factors, the role of democratically and transparently elected parliaments are becoming even more crucial.

Parliaments are and should be those institutions that should act as balancing shock-absorbers when any major crisis emerges in any country, whether it be an external aggression or internal turmoil to keep country and state institutions strong and working, and not to let them fail. And if the parliament is elected democratically and has high legitimacy it can play this role effectively increasing the level of resilience of the country. If not, it may even worsen the situation.

Unfortunately, my country has been facing external and internal interrelated threats to its sovereignty and statehood for the last 3 years and our parliament has been playing a pivotal role to ensure the stability in the country, as well as helping the government in its attempts to seek peace in the region.

After the 2nd Nagorno-Karabakh war when the cease fire agreement was reached between Armenia & Azerbaijan different external and internal players wanted to use this opportunity to illegally seize the power in Armenia and only democratically elected parliament with its majority and majority backed government could absorb that enormous shock preventing the country to go deep into chaos and civil war. And the situation finally resolved by holding new snap elections after the resignation of government that were again recognized by international community as fair and transparent.

Our parliament and especially its majority supports also peace talks with our neighbor Azerbaijan that government of Armenia is performing adding its meaningful effort to the provision of stability not only in the country but also around it. Without this backing government could do a little in this regard. Democratically elected parliamentarians’ involvement in peace negotiations will eventually make the possible deal long-lasting and the opposite, exclusion of the institution that represents its people will make the deal fragile and short-term. Later we often see in in autocratic societies when members of parliaments are not even aware of the particularities of these kinds of important talks.

I thank you for your attention.