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Back 2023 HELP Network Conference

On 6 and 7 July 2023, the Council of Europe Programme for Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) held its 2023 Network Conference under the auspices of the Latvian Chairmanship of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers. The Conference was held in the Council of Europe (CoE) premises in Strasbourg and was attended by 125 participants and by hundreds more, who followed it online.

The HELP Annual Network Conference is the main gathering of the HELP Network members (Justice Training Institutions and Bar Associations) and partners such as European Judicial Training Network (EJTN), Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), UNHCR etc. The event was also streamed online to a wider audience. The recording of the Conference will be made available shortly.

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Ambassador Jānis KĀRKLIŅŠ, Chair of Ministers’ Deputies and Permanent Representative of Latvia before the CoE, opened the Conference referring to the Russian Federation’s brutal and unprovoked aggression against Ukraine. He mentioned that the operationalisation of the Register of Damage is underway, and it will be launched on the 11th of September in Riga, Latvia, during the Conference of Justice Ministers of the Member States of the Council of Europe. He continued his speech by stating the three over arching goals of Latvia’s Presidency, namely, i) to strengthen democracy and the rule of law, ii) to promote freedom of expression, the safety of journalists and the digital agenda of the Council of Europe (including its work on a Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence) and lastly, iii) to advance reforms within the Council of Europe through the implementation of the decisions taken at the Summit in Reykjavik. Ambassador KĀRKLIŅŠ underlined the role of education to secure and disseminate the Council of Europe values and the vital role played by the HELP Programme in enhancing capacities of judges, prosecutors and lawyers to uphold democracy and the rule of law. He illustrated this by referring to the successful cooperation between Latvia and the HELP Programme, that involved the launching of the HELP course on ‘’Data Protection and Privacy Rights’’ in Riga this February and of the HELP course on ‘’Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence’’ in October. He also underlined the genuine commitment of Latvia’s Judicial Training Center to human rights education by the integration of HELP courses into its training curricula.

Christοphe POIREL, Director of Human Rights at the Council of Europe, began his speech by also referring to the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and how the Council of Europe, in the framework of its mandate, responded to it both at the political and cooperation level. In that last context, he mentioned the targeted cooperation projects addressed for Ukraine, including the HELP Programme. He then recalled that HELP, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year, has achieved a lot, thanks in particular to the crucial support of the European Union, its outstanding cooperation with national Justice Training Institutions and Bar Councils and the digitalisation of society, which still led, even after the pandemic, thousands of legal professionals to enrolling and completing HELP courses hosted on the Council of Europe e-learning platform. He concluded by inviting everyone to continue supporting HELP in order to promote the Council of Europe norms, values and principles. He also encouraged justice institutions to include HELP courses in their training programmes and implement them on their own, particularly in initial training, and use HELP courses to train legal professionals on specific aspects identified (by the Execution Department) as problematic,especially in situations of complex or structural issues where large-scale training is needed. Lastly, he encouraged universities and particularly, Law Faculties to use HELP courses.

Ambassador Vesna BATISTIĆ KOS, Head of the European Union Delegation to the Council of Europe, opened her speech by thanking the Council of Europe for the long-lasting cooperation with the European Commission on judicial training. She underlined the role of the HELP Programme on the implementation of the European Judicial Training Strategy for 2021-2024 in the fields of rule of law and human and fundamental rights, for which HELP will continue to receive the Commission’s support under the EU Justice Programme. She also referred to the Commission’s priority regarding the digitalisation of justice and the crucial role HELP could play in that regard, by enhancing, through its training activities, the digital competence of all professionals involved in that process. She concluded her speech by referring to a number of tangible examples illustrating the strong cooperation of the EU with the Council of Europe (inter alia, the HELP Asylum/Migration e-Desks, or the integration by national justice training institutions of the HELP courses on Women’s Access to Justice and combating violence in their own training curricula, under the PGG II component on Combating violence against women and domestic violence, etc.) that have contributed to raising human rights and justice standards, reforming the functioning of national systems and reinforcing adherence to a rule of law culture.

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The keynote speech at the Conference was delivered by Judge Síofra O’LEARY, President of the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR). She began her speech by emphasizing the importance of the HELP Programme in delivering up-to-date training courses for judges, prosecutors, lawyers and law students on the Convention system. She referred to several actions taken by the Court of Strasbourg aiming at building and strengthening its relations with its national counterparts and making the Court’s case-law easily accessible to everyone. President’s O’Leary’s speech focused especially on four key themes of the Reykjavik Declaration and its appendix IX, which is devoted to the Convention system and the ECtHR, namely accountability,execution of Court judgments, EU accession to the European Convention on Human Rights, and safeguarding democracy. She particularly mentioned her two priorities related to accountability that she has set, as President of the Court, namely rolling out the tools designed to deal with the stock of pending Russian cases post-expulsion and accelerating and coordinating the pending inter-state cases which concern, in particular, the situation in Ukraine.

Judge O’LEARY presented a selection of cases (see references in her speech) that showcased the ECtHR’s response with regard to the four key themes addressed in the Reykjavik Declaration and underlined the importance of creating a fully-informed community of judges, prosecutors, practising lawyers and students, who will contribute to the effective protection of human rights in Europe.

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A prominent place in the Conference agenda was dedicated to the initiatives carried out by the CoE and in particular by its Justice and Human Rights Training Division to support Ukrainian and European legal professionals in the face of the war in Ukraine following the Russian military aggression and its consequences (particularly with regard to human rights).

Olga KOSTENKO, Coordinator of the ‘HELP in Ukraine’ project highlighted the immediate response of the Programme to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine by the creation of the HELP e-desks and the initiation of the Project on ‘’Supporting contextualisation of HELP modules/courses for legal professionals in times of war in Ukraine’’. She also provided an up-to-date information with regard to the courses followed mostly by Ukrainians and on the number of the HELP Platform users from Ukraine, that have doubled from 4,500 when the war started to some 9,000 in July 2023. Relevant HELP courses have been translated and adapted for Ukrainian legal professionals, such as Human Rights in the Armed Forces, Property Rights, Cybercrime and Electronic Evidence, as well as Judicial Reasoning and Human Rights, with more to follow.

The session continued with interventions by Olesia OTRADNOVA, Director of the Prosecutors Training Center of Ukraine and by Nataliia ALIUSHYNA, Head of the National Agency for Civil Service of Ukraine, who shared information regarding their respective audiences while expressing their genuine interest in adapting HELP courses for Ukraine.

Mykola GNATOVSKY, Judge rat the ECtHR, Kresimir KAMBER, Senior Lawyer at the Registry of the ECtHR and Andrew FORDE, visiting fellow in the Irish Centre for Human Rights, presented the HELP courses under development/update that, i.a., are being very much taken by Ukrainians: International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (under development), Prohibition of ill-Treatment (PIT) including a new module on PITduring Armed Conflict, Transitional Justice and Human Rights.

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The highlights of the HELP Programme were presented by Eva PASTRANA, Head of Justice and Human Rights Training Division, Council of Europe, who revealed that the number of users on the HELP online platform had grown to more than 128.000 at the end of June 2023 (top 10 CoE MS: Türkiye, Italy, France, Ukraine, Spain, Greece, Romania, UK, Georgia and Poland). The catalogue of HELP online courses on various human rights topics grew to 46 courses and more than 500 national versions (translations and adaptations to national law and jurisprudence) freely available on the CoE HELP online platform. HELP courses cover European human rights standards illustrating the interplay between the Council of Europe (ECHR, European Social Charter and other Council of Europe Conventions as well as ECtHR jurisprudence) and EU (EU Charter and other EU law and jurisprudence the Court of Justice of the European Union).

The HELP achievements under the regional Projects on EU-CoEHELP in the EU, HELP in the Western Balkans, HELP in South Mediterranean as well as the HELP activities in Türkiye, Eastern Partnership countries, and in Central Asia were also presented to the participants by Oana GIRLESCU, Jasminka PERUNICIC ALLEN, Ana-Maria TELBIS and Krystyna KHOKHLOVA, from the HELP Secretariat, Pilar MORALES, Coordinator of CoE Neighbourhood Policy with the South Mediterranean, and Alper HAKKI YAZICI, Deputy Head of the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of Justice of Turkiye. Finally, Elena JOVANOVSKA-BREZOSKA, Head of Unit in the CoE Cooperation Programmes Division, presented the integration of HELP in CoE cooperation projects.

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Wojciech POSTULSKI, Policy officer at the European Judicial Training Unit of the European Commission presented the EU perspective in relation to the European training of legal professionals. He emphasised the importance of judicial training on the digitalisation of justice, one of the priorities set by the European judicial training strategy 2021-2024 while he referred to the three-day DG JUST 2023 online conference of stakeholders on this particular issue. He then extensively referred to the European Judicial Training Report and the data extracted therefrom with regard to the training of EU justice professionals on EU law in 2021 that revealed, among others, a continuing upward trend for lawyers, court prosecutors’, office staff and notaries in comparison with pre-pandemic years.

Sanja JOVICIC, Project Manager at the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) presented the tools and resources related to the Charter developed by FRA, among which, the 2022 Fundamental Rights Report, Charter country sheets, Charterpedia (the Agency’s encyclopaedia on the EU Charter), the Charter Handbook, Charter case studies, as well as the FRA platform where, among others, Charter courses are to be found.

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Throughout the conference, participants also received presentations of the new or newly updated HELP courses, developed during the year and addressing important issues raised by many demands from HELP institutional partners.

Sanja JOVICIC from FRA introduced the participants to the new HELP course on ECHR-EU Charter Interplay, published in July 2023; Andriana KOSTOPOULOU, former Chair of CDENF and course co-author, presented the main aspects of the updated HELP course on Child-friendly Justice and Evgenia GIAKOMOPOULOU, head of the CoE SOGI Unit, presented the new course on LGBTI persons in Asylum Procedures. Finally, Ana-Maria TELBIS, introduced the participants to the HELP courses under update: Admissibility Criteria, Combating trafficking in Human Beings and Right to Liberty and Security, as well as to the new HELP courses under development: Artificial Intelligence, Transition to Adulthood and Quality of Justice/the work of CEPEJ.

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Through the conference, participants were made aware of the cooperation dynamics and synergies existing within the HELP network, its geographical implementation and its institutional collaborations and partnerships.

Tatiana COJOCARU, Head of Section in the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the Council of Europe, spoke about the specific obligations of the states arising from the Court’s judgments and the different synergies across the Council of Europe (HELP, CPT, ECRI, SOGI, GREVIO, CEPEJ, etc) that could assist States in their efforts to effectively implement the Court’s judgments. She particularly mentioned that States refer to HELP trainings in their Action Plans and Action Reports. She also cited cases where the Committee of Ministers encouraged States to reinforce training and awareness raising by following the relevant HELP courses (e.g. 1468th meeting, June 2023, Kitanovski group v. North Macedonia, 1451th meeting, December 2022, Gubacsci group v. Hungary, 1436th meeting, June 2022, Bekir Ousta and Others v. Greece).

Renis ZAGANJORI, from the Knowledge Sharing Unit of the ECtHR, gave an overview of the ECtHR Knowledge Sharing platform that became public in October 2022 while he also presented how ECtHR tools and resources are mainstreamed in the HELP courses.

Tigran KARAPETYAN, Head of Transversal Challenges and Multilateral Projects Division, referred to the CoE Digital Agenda for 2022-2025 and to one of its objectives to accompany member States for a digital transition with European values based on Council of Europe standards through cooperation activities. He elaborated on the Digitalisation Projects within his Division that concern the national judicial systems and their objectives; he specifically referred to the ongoing Project on “Promotion of the rule of law and fundamental rights through high – quality online trainings in the Croatian Judiciary”.

Ingrid DERVEAUX, Secretary-general of the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN) presented, among others, the strong partnership between HELP and EJTN (e.g. use of HELP courses as training material for EJTN trainings, participation of HELP experts in EJTN trainings etc) and how this bond could be further reinforced during 2024 (e.g. development of joint training based on an existing HELP course, reinforcement of cooperation for Western Balkans Project, study visits at ECtHR, etc).

Panagiotis PERAKIS, President of the Council of Bars and Law Societies in Europe (CCBE) also addressed the participants. He reaffirmed the essential need of training legal professionals on EU and cross border issues to ensure the effective implementation of judicial proceedings and to build mutual trust. In that regard, he emphasised the crucial role of HELP in providing high-quality training to lawyers around the world and highlighted the excellent results (96% success rate) of the HELP course ‘’Ethics for Lawyers’’ which was launched in 2022 in Strasbourg for a group of lawyers. He praised the involvement of CCBE representatives in the development of HELP courses mentioning the recent course on Artificial Intelligence, which, as he stated, will also be useful, when it becomes available, for lawyers to follow it.

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HELP Network members presented their experiences with HELP courses, highlighting good practices, (particularly translating and adapting HELP courses to their national legislation and practices and integrating key HELP courses in compulsory initial training) and their plans and ideas for future cooperation:

Kristina BEKAVAC, from the Croatian Judicial Academy, mentioned that national efforts to integrate HELP courses in the national judicial training programme have been significantly strengthened by the Council of Europe, the HELP team and the European Commission through a project financed from the Technical Support Instrument of the DG REFORM and dedicated to the trainings on the rule of law and fundamental freedoms. This project is currently being implemented by the Judicial Academy and the Office of the Agent of the Republic of Croatia before the European Court of Human Rights.
Gianluca GRASSO, from the Italian Superior School of Magistrature, stressed the fundamental role of the HELP Programme and its courses in disseminating the values and culture of the European Convention on Human Rights and the ECtHR case law to legal professionals and in particular judges. He then provided concrete examples of HELP cooperation activities that have been implemented for the Italian Judiciary.
Levan MESHKORADZE, from the CoE Office in Tbilisi, shared with the participants the implementation of HELP courses in Georgian Law Universities and the integration of HELP courses for its Bar Association. As of now, to become a Georgian lawyer, one needs to complete the HELP course on ECHR, the ECtHR and Execution of Judgments.
Rocio ORTEGA ATIENZA, from the Spanish Judiciary School, presented the benefits of introducing HELP courses in the initial training of judges as well as the remarkable results of launching annually approximately 6-8 HELP courses per year as part of the continuous training of Spanish judges. She also highlighted the benefits of organising joint training with judges, prosecutors and lawyers.
Ecaterina POPA, from the Moldovan National Institute of Justice, also explained, in a similar manner and very concretely, how HELP courses are implemented in the training of judges in Moldova and their wish to contextualise more HELP courses.
Jelena RISTIC, from the North Macedonian Bar Association, informed the participants about how the HELP programme is implemented in North Macedonia both for lawyers andlaw students and which of its courses have been particularly attended by North Macedonians legal professionals. She also shared, as a positive example, the integration of the HELP course on Child Friendly Justice within the training curricula for Macedonian lawyers (up to 20% of Macedonian lawyers have taken HELP courses).

Krystyna KHOKHLOVA, Project Coordinator in the CoE Cooperation Programmes Division, presented an overview of how HELP courses can be used in the training curricula of Universities and how awareness with respect to them could be raised. She also provided the participants with concrete examples of Universities offering HELP courses for their students (Turkiye, Armenia, Ukraine, UK, Serbia, etc.)

Olaf KÖNDGEN, Senior Project Manager at CoE, presented the OCEAN programme which aims at uniting universities, research institutions and scholars from the Council of Europe’s 46 member states around the shared goal of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.

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In addressing the impact of the HELP Programme and how it could be further developed, Ana-Maria TELBIS explained the future challenges and initiatives that will be taken by the Justice and Human Rights Training Division, to best meet the expectations of European legal professionals: the audio format for some pilot courses, large scale HELP course roll-outs, HELP Statements of Accomplishment, accredited course pages and the role of FOCAL and INFO points. She then briefly presented the participants with the methods of measuring the impact of HELP activities by effectively collecting data and reporting on HELP training. The HELP Report was also presented, with information and data related to the period 2015-2022.

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In concluding the event, Eva PASTRANA presented the results of the Consultative Board Elections and the work anticipated by the newly appointed members. She then, referred to the HELP Network Strategy and its goals, including among others, the promotion of HELP courses as self-learning and reference/working tool, the commitment of the Focal and Info Points to share the knowledge/catalogue among their peers, particularly those working in criminal issues, as well as to translate the catalogue in the respective national languages. Frederic DOLT emphasised the need of the States to resort to the HELP Programme and its courses while seeking high-quality, cost-effective, and efficient training for their legal professionals. According to his own words, ’’Knowledge is power. Education is empowering. And our precious values can only be preserved if at the forefront of their protection we have empowered, skilled and knowledgeable professionals. In this regard, education and training on human rights should be a constant priority.’’

Composition of the newly elected HELP Consultative Board:

JTIs (Focal Points)