57 trainees of the tenth and the eleventh generation of the Judicial Academy of the Republic of Serbia have started the Council of Europe HELP course “Judicial Reasoning and Human Rights”.

The hybrid launch event was addressed by Maja Prelic Simovic, Deputy Director of the Judicial Academy of Serbia. Council of Europe officers presented and shared with the participants an overview of the achievements of the HELP in WB action and the HELP online platform so far.

In the upcoming period participants of the course will have the opportunity to fully grasp the extent of the right to a fair trial and fully exercise their role in upholding human rights and effectively implementing the European Convention on Human rights (the ECHR) on a domestic level and enhance their knowledge of judicial reasoning and justice quality standards relating to both criminal and non-criminal proceedings (including civil and administrative), case-law and good practices. The course will be tutored by an experienced HELP tutor, Majda Krsikapa, from the Constitutional Court of Serbia.

As of this year the course has been listed as compulsory in the Judicial Academy’s Initial Training Annual Programme. Young legal professionals from Serbia are among the first groups which are attending the updated version of the HELP course, which was launched in February 2022. The development and subsequent course’s national adaptation and implementation are a continuation of actions’ efforts on strengthening capacity of jurists to effectively implement ECHR and standards arising from the ECtHR case-law on the domestic level.

The course is being implemented in cooperation with the Judicial Academy within the actions "HELP in the Western Balkans“ and Strengthening the effective legal remedies to human rights violations in Serbia”, implemented under the European Union and Council of Europe Joint Programme "Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2020".