Litigation Training and Support Program
In this section
Background
In the 1990s, COLPI, the forerunner of the Justice Initiative, organized and supported a series of intensive training programs in human rights litigation for lawyers from southeast Europe, the south Caucasus, Central Asia, Ukraine and Russia. These programs were conducted in partnership with international NGOs such as Interights, the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, the Netherlands Helsinki Committee and others. The training format combined knowledge transmission with practical skills development in sessions conducted in both Russian and English for a carefully selected group of lawyers. The Justice Initiative continues to support training programs launched in 2001 for human rights lawyers from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in partnership with Interights and the Netherlands Helsinki Committee.
Objectives
In the main, the training aims at enhancing the ability of human rights litigators to apply provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the United Nations human rights instruments in domestic courts and internationally. A separate set of training sessions has focused on litigation in the areas of equality and non-discrimination.
Activities
The program consists of a series of five practical and interactive sessions, ranging between four and seven days in length, for carefully selected small groups of lawyers from each country of the south Caucasus. Twenty-one human rights lawyers from Georgia completed the program in April 2003. Identical programs will start in Armenia in the fall of 2003 and in Azerbaijan in 2004, with the support of Justice Initiative, the relevant Soros national foundations and the Dutch Government. Ten graduates from each country program will participate in a two-week training program in Soesterberg, the Netherlands, in 2005.
Partners
Bulgarian Helsinki Committee
Interights
Netherlands Helsinki Committee
Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Union Article 42 of the Constitution, Georgia
OSI Assistance Foundation—Armenia
Bar Association of Armenia