Armenian citizens declared legally incompetent doomed to lifelong closed chain
Any citizen of Armenia, if declared legally incompetent, is doomed to a lifelong closed chain without any chance to ever recover the right to a legal standing in court and administrative procedures or property transactions, says a lawyer.
Speaking to Tert.am, Marietta Temuryan, a human rights monitoring specialist at the Helsinki Civic Assembly’s Vanadzor Office, particularly shared her concerns of the situation of people in old-age pensioners' homes and other semi-closed institutions where she periodically conducts monitoring.
“The Vardenis Psycho-neurological Boarding House (Gegharkunik region - Ed), which is the only care center for full age individuals with mental problems and functions as a subordinate institution adjunct to the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, can admit only people declared incompetent. And the latter cannot make a decision about leaving the institution on their own. The psycho-neurological institutions under Armenia’s Ministry of Health also offer treatment and care to individuals declared mentally incompetent, who are admitted and can be discharged only upon a legal represetnative's consent,” she said.
A total of 450 patients are now under the institution’s care.
“The whole problem is that whenever an individual is declared legally incompetent, the decision about his or her treatment is made only by a guardian. So the person in questions cannot practically leave the place. And so they spend their lifetime in a mental clinic,” she added.
The lawyer said she knows of very few cases that involved relatives seeking a corresponding court ruling out of property bias.
Temuryan stressed the importance of expert examinations which she said might give at least those persons a chance to be declared partially incompetent. “If, for instance, a person is denied the right to vote by the decision of a doctor or a commission, it doesn’t mean at all that the individual in question cannot be in marriage just because the spouse filed a divorce appeal on the grounds of [the ruling] declaring him or her legally incompetent,” she said, noting further that those individuals are also practically also denied the right to conclude transactions (including contracts authorizing third persons to give for rent, sell or buy their property).
Temuryan hailed the parliamentary majority’s initiative proposing amendments to the Civil Code to increase the target groups’ advantages, but in the meantime, she stressed the importance of more global institutional reforms.
“The main problem is that ‘incompetent’, as a term, is a comprehensive concept. So whenever an individual is declared [legally] incompetent, he or she loses his civil, political and employment rights, the right to marry or receive education,” added the lawyer.
Under the bill, initiated by lawmakers of the ruling Republican Party, it is proposed that a case involving a demand for declaring a citizen of Armenia legally incompetent be considered only in the presence of a guardian or a trustee. “A citizen’s participation in the hearing is mandatory whenever such participation does not pose a threat to the life or health of the citizen in question or other individuals. Upon the presence of such a threat, the case is considered in the venue where the citizen is housed, including a mental hospital,” reads the draft law.
Expressing her unconditional support to the proposal, Temuryan noted that in very few cases are rulings declaring an individual legally incompetent are issued in their presence. “There is no precise statistics, but I have talked to people with mental problems; they admitted that they were declared incompetent without attending the hearing,” she noted.
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