International community fails to react to non-transparent mining industry in Armenia - OPINION

The mining industry works in Armenia are carried out in a non-transparent and without any accountability. For many years, the international community has shown no any reaction to this, Parvana Valiyeva, the Executive Director of the "Saghlamliga Khidmat" Public Union, one of the founders of the Environmental Protection First (EPF) Coalition, told Report.

She recalled that they recently sent a statement to international organizations and the United Nations (UN) together with NGOs operating in the fields of health and ecology both in Azerbaijan and abroad:

"We also sent an open letter to the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, to urgently stop the mining industry, which has a huge impact on the environment. Unfortunately, there was no response. In our appeal to the UN, we stated that a monitoring group should be organized and expertise should be created to assess the environment. No action was taken by the UN Special Rapporteur on the environment. Therefore, we thought that as non-governmental organizations with such experience in mining activities in the field of both health and ecology, we should join forces and create a coalition called Environmental Protection First (EPF) in order to work more efficiently."

Emphasizing that the coalition was created to protect the environment, Valiyeva said that local and foreign NGOs, private organizations, and companies will be involved in cooperation with the organization:

"Initially, we start our activity by calling on local and foreign companies operating in Armenia's mining industry to post the full text of their Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) documents as soon as possible on their official websites or to announce to the public. Because these should be open documents and should be posted on websites, including the public should be informed through the media. We will present our demands in this form."