Internship - Summer 2005
Suggestions for Later Volunteers
If their background is similar to mine, in that they are law students, it may be better after a week or two to acclimatize to AYLA’s activities through working with Edward in translation as well as website correction to then involve them more with AYLA’s lawyers and advocates. Of course this would depend on how strong their Armenian language and knowledge of law is, but it would definitely have been interesting to me to learn where and how to find the law in the Armenian codes. The visits to court with Liana and listening to consultations by Mihran and Gevorg where easily the most fascinating parts of my internship, but to have been involved more directly to help the lawyers with their work would have been even better. Possibly working with Lyudvig and the other LSD members in conducting research and possibly even writing a paper to defend at an AYLA conference would have been very challenging and interesting. With my level of Armenian it may have been too much for me to accomplish; as my goal was to learn as much Armenian as possible and to learn about the judicial system, I can easily say that I made great progress on both through working in AYLA, especially it being a law office. There is obviously plenty of work available for future volunteers with a basic knowledge of Armenian like me, such as translation and working with English in writing proposals and so on, but for those students with an advanced level of language and a fairly good knowledge of how to work with the law and research it would be more interesting to involve them directly in AYLA’s legal work.
Obviously, not being trained Armenian lawyers, it would be wrong to hand them too difficult a task too early, but it does feel very fulfilling from the volunteer’s point of view to have real responsibility and feel that he has made a good difference in AYLA’s work. Much of this will depend upon the particular volunteer’s personality and knowledge, but I can say that if I am able to return to Armenia next summer and work for AYLA for a few weeks or a month, I would love to be able to do legal research and help the lawyers to draft documents, contracts, and briefs for court. This way I can help them in saving time in their workload, and for me I could learn valuable skills in real legal work. Even more useful from their point of view would obviously be drafting and translation in English, for example work with the European bodies such as the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, and the European Union, especially as I will be taking a European Law module at university this year. For a volunteer from a similar knowledge of Armenian and European Law, that would be ideal. However, to ease them into AYLA’s activities and work, the work such as website correction and basic translations would be useful.
Armand Sarvarian
Law Student, University of London
