CoE and EU Implement Project to Enhance Capacity of Human Rights Defenders and Lawyers

The Council of Europe and the European Union launched the three-year project in Azerbaijan, "Improving knowledge and skills of lawyers and human rights in the light of local implementation of the European Convention of Human Rights and the renewed European Social Charter."

The project kicked off courses for lawyers and human rights defenders on the use of these international instruments and, in particular, the prohibition of discrimination standards.

This week, Baku hosted the first of three of the four training sessions for 30 lawyers and human rights defenders. The next session will be held in December and February.

Participants in the program subsequently themselves will provide training on the application of human rights standards that allow Azerbaijani human rights lawyers to send to the European Court of Human Rights a well-founded statement.

"The development of the judicial system of the Council of Europe and increasing the capacity of legal professionals, particularly lawyers and human rights defenders, is one of the priorities of the organization. In this area, there is a variety of events. The aim of the present program is to assist the Azerbaijani lawyers to improve their ability to conduct trials on the basis of the jurisprudence of the European Convention of Human Rights and to provide high quality applications submitted to the European Court of Human Rights," said the deputy head of the office of CoE in Azerbaijan Teymur Melik- Aslanov.

One of the partners in the implementation of the program is the Academy of Justice of Azerbaijan.

"For lawyers, such training is important, and being trained in the course of this program they will bring attention to the Justice Academy training programs," said the representative of the Justice Academy Elchin Khalafov.

In turn, the representative of the EU mission in Azerbaijan Miguel Magro noted that the EU attaches great importance to the development of justice and the rule of law in Azerbaijan. In particular, in recent years the EU has financed two projects for reforms in the field of justice costing 16 million and 7 million euros. In addition to the Justice Academy, another partner is the Bar Association. In addition, the beneficiaries of the project were a number of local NGOs.

We note that the draft of the Council of Europe and the EU is regional and calls for action in the period from 2013 to 2015 in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. -06C-