Executive summary 

The Directorate General of Human Rights and the Council of Europe Office in Belgrade started project “Implementation of Council of Europe Human Rights standards in Serbia” in 2002.  

The project is accomplishing as support to human rights education for judges, prosecutors and other relevant professionals and institutions, in order to improve implementation of European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in the national legal system.
 

Objectives

The aim of this project is to enable judges, prosecutors, lawyers and otherrelevant professionals to learn more about ECHR and its proper interpretation and implementation, its additional Protocols, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and to raise awareness on importance of harmonization of national legislation with Council of Europe standards.

Main project objectives are:

• To improve the skills and raise awareness of the representatives of the Serbian judiciary and other legal professionals on international human rights law, in particular the ECHR and its implementation in Serbia;
• To enable harmonisation of national human rights legislation and practice with the European legal norms;
• To provide legal professionals in Serbia with practical training on the ECHR and case law;
• To train legal professionals who could be facilitators and/or trainers on the ECHR in Serbia;
• To support translation and publication of human rights handbooks and other literatureto enable relevant professionals to learn more about ECHR and its proper interpretation and implementation.

The project is implemented through numerous seminars, conferences, basic and advanced trainings on the ECHR.

The successful cooperation with the Ministry of Justice,  the Supreme Court of Serbia and the Judicial Training Centre of Serbia has been established and since 2002 each judge in Serbia has taken part in at least one Council of Europe seminar on the ECHR. 

Many handbooks on implementation of the ECHR in national proceedings and before the European Court of Human Rights were published in previous years (guides for implementation of articles of the ECHR, selected judgements). Also, the part of the project is a monthly human rights bulletin as a completion of most recent  judgments of European Court of Human Rights, published with the purpose to update judges and prosecutors in Serbia regarding the case law and comments on the ECHR.

Project is funded by the Irish Government (Voluntary Contribution) and the Council of Europe (Ordinary budget).