Media & Law Institute is a non governmental organization (NGO) registered in June 2002. The executive power is given to the Director. All the projects of MLI are implemented by the active involvement of all its members.The organization’s main focus is to fight corruption through freedom of expression and by strengthening media and law in Armenia. Seeing its main mission as promoting freedom of expression, MLI directs its activities in four main dimensions: legislation, litigation, education, and public awareness.

The projects that MLI is launching towards improvement of legislation related to the information field and media are based on voluntary participation of the members of MLI in various task forces drafting and lobbying the law. Some active members of MLI were and are involved in task forces working on the following statutes: Criminal code, articles on defamation and insult (September 2002 – August 2003); Freedom of Information Law (2001- 2003); Mass Media Law (March - April 2002); Law on Advertisement (May 2002), etc.

• Litigation

MLI together with FOI Center and CSI launched a project aimed at providing free legal aid and counseling on FOI issues in three Regions of Armenia. This project will be based on the experience of the informally implemented legal aid project that started back in February 2002, when several TV and radio stations were provided with free legal consulting by the lawyers of the MLI. Moreover, MLI closely cooperated with the Center of Free Legal Aid of the Bar Association of Armenia and Legal Clinic of the Law Department of Yerevan State University providing legal expertise and assistance.

• Education

In September 2002 MLI with the support of World Learning implemented a project on training of media law trainers for journalists. The outcome of the project was a developed training manual for journalists with modern interactive methods as well as 10 trainers with wide capacity to work with various media groups . The manual is flexible for any legislative changes due to the structure of the exercises involved in it. During the summer 2002 a Media Law Course was developed by the experts of the MLI for the fourth year students of the Law Department of Yerevan State University.  In 2003 a project of developing a new training manual on Media law was completed. This time the manual was developed to meet the need of advocates. The project was sponsored by ABA CEELI Armenia. The manual  was published in May 2004 with the support of OSCE.

• Public awareness

In close cooperation with Civil Society Institute and Freedom of Information center MLI held 11 roundtables in all Regional centers of Armenia from March till May 2004. The project was sponsored by the British Embassy in Yerevan. One of the outcomes of the roundtables was the establishment of the FOI Coordination Councils that will further collaborate with the FOI Civic Initiative for further promotion of FOI Laws in Armenia. The members of the MLI were making presentations and speeches on several conferences and workshops, locally and internationally. MLI will continue active participation in the events organized by some of its partners: Association of investigative journalism, Civic Education Project, Bar Association of Republic of Armenia, Law Club of the American University of America, Law Department of the Yerevan State University, etc.