The Council of Europe HELP Programme (Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals) is holding its 2022 Annual Network Conference in Strasbourg and online from 30 June – 1 July 2022. This year, the Council of Europe’s response to the war in Ukraine is one of the key themes of the conference.
Why and how to train legal professionals in times of war? The conference participants will discuss this theme with representatives of National School of Judges of Ukraine, Prosecutor’s Training Centre of Ukraine and of the Ukrainian National Bar Association’s High School for Advocates. The Council of Europe representatives will explain what immediate support the Organisation has given to Ukraine. One example of such support is the virtual Asylum/Migration HELP e-Desks launched by the HELP Programme days after the start of the war, on 1 March 2022. It aims to help lawyers from the most affected countries dealing with refugees from Ukraine (Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Moldova) access necessary information, as well as to train legal professionals to effectively handle cases at national level.
There are currently more than 105,000 users of the Council of Europe HELP e-learning platform, the top five countries in terms of the number of users being Türkiye, France, Italy, Spain, and Ukraine.
The conference has been organised under the auspices of the Irish Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. It was opened by Thomas Byrne TD., the Irish Minister of State for European Affairs; the Director General of Human Rights and Rule of Law of the Council of Europe, Christos Giakoumopoulos; and the Ambassador and Head of the EU Delegation to the Council of Europe Meglena Kuneva. The keynote speech was delivered by Judge Tim Eicke from the European Court of Human Rights.
The Conference is fully broadcast online and is open to everyone interested in the work of the HELP Programme of the Council of Europe and in the HELP online courses.
