The 2013 annual Conference of the European Program for Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (the HELP Program) took place on 18-19 June 2013 in Strasbourg and was dedicated to “Cross-cutting issues on human rights training for legal professionals”. The event was organized under the Armenian chairmanship of the Committee of ministers of the Council of Europe.

The annual plenary session was inaugurated by the welcoming addresses delivered by Mr. Philippe Boillat, Director General of Human Rights and Rule of Law (DGI), and Mr. Armen Papikyan, Ambassador of the Permanent Representative of Armenia to the Council of Europe.

During the introductory speeches, Mr. Nils Muižnieks, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, discussed the role of legal professionals in defending human rights and preserving the human rights protection system, and Mr. Lech Garlicki, former Judge and Section-President of the European Court of Human Rights, new areas of human rights protection, such as positive obligations, supranational acts and extraterritoriality.

Participants to the Conference were composed of the representatives of national training institutions, bar associations, international and non-governmental organizations, training providers, focal and info points, international experts and keynote speakers, and the CoE’s representatives.

The participants were affiliated to 4 working groups, each of them concerned with different areas of human rights training for legal professionals (networking on ECHR training for legal professionals; interplay among different human rights training curricula in global and regional human rights law; model curricula and national specificities; crossing over language barriers in multinational training initiatives for legal professionals, etc…).

At the end of the Conference, Mr. Grzegorz Borkovski, Mrs. Sandra Budimir, Mr. Simon O'Toole, Mrs. Beatrice Ramascanu, Mrs. Jolanta Samuolyte and Mr. Pier Giovanni Traversa were elected as members of the Consultative Board of the HELP Network.

The closing speech was given by Mr. Christos Giakoumopoulos, Director of Human Rights (DGI).

Useful Links:

• Video report
• Analysis of the questionnaires