On 21-22 June 2018, the European Programme for Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) of the Council of Europe gathered representatives from Judiciary Schools and Bar Councils from member States for its 2018 Annual conference ‘Good training for good judgments’.

Highlights and results of the Programme were presented by Eva Pastrana, Head of HELP Unit. In addition to the European Convention on Human Rights, the developed training courses cover now the European Social Charter and other key Council of Europe Conventions, as well as synergies with EU legislation. Key geographical and topical projects were presented such as HELP in the EU (EU-funded); HELP in the Western Balkans and HELP in Russia (supported by the Human Rights Trust Fund); the HELP project with the Turkish Directorate of Migration Management and the EU-Council of Europe joint project HELP Radicalisation Prevention. In the last three years, some 4,000 legal professionals have followed HELP courses organised with Council of Europe national training institutions for judges/prosecutors or bar associations. The number of people and organisations accessing HELP courses for free through the HELP online platform has increased by 400% – from 7,000 users three years ago to almost 25,000 today.

The conference also hosted presentations of HELP courses developed in the past year, in cooperation with inhouse experts of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights. The Special Representative on migration and refugees, Tomáš Boček, presented a new HELP course on refugee and migrant children, which will become available online in the HELP platform at the end of July 2018. New courses concerning child-friendly justice, internal displacement and trafficking in human beings were also presented during the event.