Since independence all governments have been speaking of the importance of the civil society, but indeed we don’t have formed and established institutions yet. What does a civil society mean?
Generally a society is a complex of social unities such as groups and teams united by economic, ethnic, cultural and other interests, which exist and live out of the state administration system and meanwhile enable control over the state administration system. The civil society can be described with different postulate as it follows:
- Civil society is a society of people with higher social, cultural, moral and economic status.
- For the formation of a civil society the economic independence of all members of the society is essential based on private ownership.
- One of the most important characteristics of a civil society is the high level of self-organizing and self-regulating impulse.
In order to support these points we will bring several examples not to sound too theoretic. Several years ago the media wrote that a policeman had violated the traffic laws and issued a ticket to himself. It can be a very good example of sense of resonsibility with the motions of self-regulation and order. Armenians who heard about this incident thought this policeman was mad, which means that our society lacks civil way of thinking. If there is no perception of a civil society, it means that the civil society is not formed in Armenia. At first glance there are good grounds for forming a civil society in the country: we have the necessary laws, we are implementing different projects supported by other countries, etc. However, as the ombudsman of Armenia says, it is not enough: ”The formation of civil society depends on each of us; our thinking and behavior. Freedom is there where there is organization and responsibility.” The role of non-governmental organizations is very important in the process of formation of the civil society. However it is more difficult in Armenia. According to the information of the ministry of justice, as of May 1 there were 3450 registered non-governmental organizations in Armenia. This is a very high number. Most of these companies exist formally on the paper only. The most important player of the civil society, i.e. the youth is very passive in Armenia. Currently there are 800 thousand young people in Armenia. Only 5% of the Armenian youth is active in civic processes. In Eastern European countries this active participation is about 20-25%, and in Western Europe it reaches 85%.
This information shows how it is so important for the European community to raise the role of the civil society in the neighborhood countries. In its message for the Eastern Partnership the European Commission writes the following: ”The reforms in the Eastern Partnership countries of the European Neighborhood Policy require more active participation of the civil society in encouraging the control over public services and strengthening the trust of people to these services. For this purpose the issue of the involvement of the civil society in the Eastern partnership initiative should be in the focus of a special attention.”
It is worth mentioning that even if the European Union is interested in such initiatives, the society does not trust these initiatives. The reason is the fact that the society truly believes that if Armenia is not interested in reforms in different sectors, neither the efforts of the EU nor other initiatives may support this process. In the Eastern Partnership project the involvement of civic organizations as a system was formulated in the form of civic society congress, which for the first time took place on November 16-17 in Brussels, during the civil society congress. This congress hosted around 20 non-governmental organizations from Armenia as well, some of which are very active.