DUAL CITIZENSHIP MUST BE A MEANS AND NOT AN AIM

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“The adoption of dual citizenship is not an aim in itself and it must not be looked upon as an aim. It is a means to reach our aim. And the aims must be clearly formulated in the conception”, announced President of the Constitutional Court Gagik Haroutyunyan during the Parliamentary hearings today.

He represented the international experience and informed that only 54 of the 191 member-countries of the UN have adopted dual citizenship, and half of them did it with reservations. Why does the 2/3 if the countries avoid dual citizenship? And why was a convention adopted in 1963 about reducing multiple citizenship. Gagik Haroutyunyan announced that the law can’t be adopted till the end of the years as it was previously told as Armenia has not joined a number of international conventions. He has fears that if the law contradicts international norms, the norms will be stronger. In order to avoid possible contradictions, Gagik Haroutyunyan offered to join the conventions first, to clear out the aims of cooperation of Armenia and the Diaspora and then to adopt the law.

Gagik Haroutyunyan also put forward the problem of those people lost their citizenship and those who have not had it at all. Besides, there is no statistics about how many people there are abroad, and how many people have lost their citizenship because of living abroad for seven years.

Leader of the Union for National Self-Determination Paruyr Hayrikyan announced that the discussion is a bit late. It ought to have taken place 15 years ago when Armenia was restoring its statehood and was to do everything to gather together its citizens. Nevertheless, Hayrikyan is against the law on dual citizenship. He thinks that we can eliminate the first article of the RA Law on citizenship which says that the RA citizen cannot be citizen of another country and live peacefully.

Member of the Communist Party central committee Frunze Kharatyan called on the authorities to create a national state.