PREFACE The 18 December 2002 Optional Protocol to the 1984 United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (hereinafter “OPCAT”) provides for the establishment of an independent National Preventive Mechanism that will have broad powers, unrestricted access to and the possibility of conducting examinations in all the places where people may be deprived of their liberty. After ratifying OPCAT, a 2008 amendment to the Republic of Armenia Law on the Human Rights Defender (adopted on 21 October 2003) designated the Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia as the independent National Preventive Mechanism stipulated by OPCAT. Subsequently, due to the Constitutional Amendments of 6 December 2015, the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia adopted (on 16 December 2016) the Republic of Armenia Constitutional Law on the Human Rights Defender, Paragraph 2 of Article 2 of which vested with the Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia the status of the National Preventive Mechanism stipulated by OPCAT. According to Article 27 of the said Constitutional Law, the aim of the Defender’s activities in the capacity of the preventive mechanism is to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in places of deprivation of liberty. To safeguard the unrestricted exercise of the Defender’s power to visit places of deprivation of liberty in the capacity of the National Preventive Mechanism, Article 28 of the Constitutional Law defines the following scope of “places of deprivation of liberty”: 1) Places for holding arrested and detained persons; 2) Penitentiary institutions; 3) Psychiatric organizations; 4) Garrison disciplinary isolators; 5) Vehicles designated for transporting persons deprived of liberty; and 6) Any other place in which a person has or may be deprived of liberty by a decision, order, or instruction of, or with the consent or permission of a state government or local self-government body or 7