The number of suicides in Armenian prisons in 2025 has reached  15-year high - Armenian Ombudsman`s Office

ArmInfo. The number of suicides in Armenian penal institutions (PIs) in 2025 - 24 cases - is a 15-year high, as stated by Hovhannes Ghukasyan, Deputy Head of the Department for the Prevention of Torture and Cruelty-Treatment at the Armenian Human Rights Defender's Office, at a press conference in Yerevan titled "Human Rights in Closed Institutions: The Right to Health Care in the Army and the Penitentiary System."

According to him, this number is at least double the 2024 figures,  demonstrating the inadequacies of competent authorities in  identifying the causes of suicides and contributing factors. "Despite  the introduction of a risk assessment mechanism in penal institutions  since 2022, visits by the Ombudsman's Office show that the  effectiveness of this mechanism remains low, as evidenced by the  opinions of psychologists," Ghukasyan said.

Regarding cases of self-harm and suicide attempts, Ghukasyan noted a  quantitative increase in suicide attempts: from 19 suicide attempts  by 14 prisoners in 2024 to 46 suicide attempts by 16 prisoners in  2025.  "Although the number of self-harm cases decreased from 625 to  617, this decrease is insignificant. The number of people committing  such acts has also decreased-from 205 to 183. The problem lies in the  lack of psychologists working with prisoners at the initial stage of  their prison stay, which makes it difficult to determine the risk of  suicide or self-harm. Furthermore, the insufficient number of  psychologists prevents all prisoners from receiving the necessary  assistance, making it impossible to effectively prevent suicide  attempts," Ghukasyan explained. He said that the problem also lies in  the lack of differentiation between suicide and self-harm cases and  their causes by the Penitentiary Medicine Center. Specifically, he  noted, the responsible bodies fail to collect and analyze cases under  their responsibility in order to subsequently take effective measures  to regulate them.

Sergey Gabrielyan, chairman of the group of public observers  monitoring penitentiary institutions and bodies of the Ministry of  Justice of Armenia, speaking about the situation in Armenia's  prisons, noted that it is sad that the responsible parties,  unfortunately, are unwilling to participate in such discussions.  This, he added, suggests that they either lack precise answers to  certain questions, are concealing the situation, or are afraid to  participate in public discussions. Meanwhile, as Gabrielyan noted,  from 2025 to the present, the monitoring group has received over 180  signals,  80% of which concerned prisoner health issues.  Meanwhile,  as Gabrielyan pointed out, such high figures in Armenia as in 2025  were last recorded in 2016 (29 deaths) and in 2024 (12 deaths), all  of which were biological. He also noted that since this is happening  in closed institutions, another problem is that neither the state nor  the Ministry of Health provides information on who is responsible for  these deaths: which doctor or which agency.

"That is, the overall problem is the inaction of state bodies. As  long as there is no one to monitor this situation, nor anyone to  blame, the situation in Armenia's prisons will only worsen," the  chairman of the public observer group concluded.