The follow-up training for lawyers-trainers on “Providing free legal aid to internally displaced persons: lessons learned and moving forward” was held on the 12^th and 13^th of November 2016. It was jointly organized by the Coordination Center for Free Legal Aid and the Council of Europe Project “Strengthening the Human Rights Protection of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine”. Ten cascade trainings were organised prior to this follow-up meeting for 200 lawyers that are responsible for providing such legal aid mainly in Donetsk, Luhansk, Dnipro and Kyiv regions, where the Council of Europe Project focuses its main activities.

During the meeting, on the first day the lawyers-trainers analyzed received experiences, improvements, lessons learned, challenges and conclusions made from the conducted ten trainings. As well participants analyzed the cases of the European Court of Human Rights related to IDPs’ rights and learnt about the changes within the national legislation concerning the social protection of IDPs, more specifically on the registration of IDPs, and on the assignments and monitoring of social payments.

Participants got possibilities to discuss the legal challenges faced by the national courts in regard to the protection of the IDPs and received methodological guidelines on conducting human rights and anti-discrimination trainings. On the second day, participants worked on updating the program of the regional cascade trainings and on developing an agenda for trainings for the staff of the newly created legal aid bureaus of the Coordination Center for Free Legal Aid.