Help

Human Rights Education for
Legal Professionals

The Italian School is a member of the network of contact points of the European Program for the Training of Human Rights Law Professionals (HELP), which provides support to the member States of the Council of Europe (CoE) on the implementation at the national level of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The School has been using the methodology and programs of the Council of Europe since 2012, continuing the activity of the High Council for the Judiciary.
Starting from 2020, given the priority of training in European Union law and the European Convention on Human Rights, four specific actions have been undertaken to allow full dissemination of the HELP program among Italian magistrates:

Action 1: Magistrates in initial training

Specific courses have been created for trainee judges to introduce the Convention and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights.
The first course was held from 4 to 8 May 2020 for 250 trainee judges and aimed to bring judges closer to the system of the Convention and the Strasbourg Court by participating in two HELP e-learning modules in English: one introducing the Court and the Convention, the other issue on privacy and data protection.
A second edition involved 300 trainee judges of the d.m. 2021 from 5 to 9 July 2021.

Action 2: Dissemination of the HELP course catalogue

The School has sent all 9,000 ordinary magistrates, including magistrates in initial training, and 4,500 honorary magistrates a letter explaining the HELP program and its objectives, as well as instructions for creating a course access account and the complete catalog translated into Italian of the available courses.
A section with the news of the HELP program is included in the issues of the SSM Bullettin.

Action 3: Training of trainers of the School

An online seminar was held on 26 June 2020 in collaboration with the Council of Europe and the HELP program to present the potential of the program for its use in territorial training activities. The potential of a standard format at the level of the various Courts of Appeal was explored. The theme was taken up again in the annual course which was held from 20 to 22 October 2021.

Action 4: Continuing training

In 2020, two online courses were created on the Prevention of Radicalization and on the Fundamental Principles of Human Rights in Biomedicine.
In 2021, four courses dedicated to Italian magistrates were held on the following topics: Key principles of human rights in biomedicine; Asylum and the ECHR; Judicial ethics; International cooperation in criminal matters, while the topics in 2022 were: Ethics for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers; Environment and human rights: ; Combating violence against women and domestic violence; Rights of persons with disabilities; ECHR-EU Charter interaction; Fight against racism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia.

Site: Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (coe.int)