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Nahapetyan, Argine
(2002).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0000fbed
Abstract
This thesis explores the current situation of the non-governmental sector in Armenia, mainly concentrating on the legal (laws governing the sector), political (relations with the state structures) and social (relations with the public) environments of the operating non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The topic was not chosen randomly. The notion of non-governmental organisations is closely related to the notions of civil society and democracy. Moreover, a strong non-governmental sector is one of the attributes of a genuine democratic society. However, in Armenia the sector, is still weak and is developing quite slowly. The main obstacles hindering the future development of the sector are sufficient and incomplete legal regulations, unfavourable attitude of the state authorities, mistrust of the population, as well as numerous problems within the sector itself. Therefore, my thesis will concentrate mainly on the exploration of the above-mentioned problem areas.
Taking into consideration the lack of in-depth studies in this extremely important area in Armenia, it can be concluded that the work will contribute to the support of the non-governmental sector as well as provide significant background for further investigation in this field.
Though there was a great amount of secondary sources available on the topic of civil society and non-govemmental organisations in general, it was very difficult to obtain sources concerning particularly the NGOs in Armenia. The main problem is the lack of attention paid to the topic in the academic circles since the non-govemmental sector is a relatively new phenomenon in our reality. Therefore, chapters concerning the non- governmental sector in Armenia are mostly based on primary sources such as the laws governing the sector, interviews with NGO leaders as well as personal observations since I was working in the sector for 2 years. The situation became even more complicated due to the reluctance of some NGO leaders to cooperate. It was difficult to understand if this was due to overcrowded schedules or to willingness to speak on this topic. Nevertheless, most of the approached did grant interviews and were generally quite cooperative. Therefore, I would like to thank all of them for their support and collaboration. Also, I am grateful to the staff members of the NGO Training and Resource Center in Armenia where I was kindly provided with an opportunity to conduct my surveys and collect important materials. A special thanks goes also to my two supervisors, Pr. Jean Garland and Pr. Mathew Gibney for their great assistance and patience.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
