The HELP course on Violence against Women and Domestic Violence was launched during a regional online event in cooperation with the Bar Associations from Albania, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. Close to 200 lawyers from the whole region will be able to participate in the course in their domestic language with the selected tutors. The event served to exchange experiences from their respective Beneficiaries but also learn about positive developments in domestic law, policies and practices.

The participants were welcomed by Ana Maria TELBIS, the Head of the Justice and Human Rights Training Division. Mihail STOJANOSKI, Lawyer/administrator at the Violence against Women Division, Council of Europe, presented the Istanbul Convention and its monitoring mechanisms with a specific focus on the Western Balkans. The tutors and experts in this specific field offered their views on the challenges of prevention and key concepts related to violence against women and domestic violence and common barriers to access to justice for victims of violence against women.

The HELP course on Violence against Women and Domestic Violence is a priority course for the HRTF funded project “HELP in the Western Balkans”. By increasing the capacities of domestic legal professionals to directly apply the ECHR, the project HELP in the Western Balkans aims to contribute to: decreasing the number of cases arriving before the ECHR and increasing the number of closed cases by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, subject to the supervision of the execution of the ECtHR's judgments.

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The HELP course Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence covers in an interactive way the key concepts, the international and European legal framework and case law governing the prevention and protection of women and girls from violence, focusing in particular on the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention). Furthermore, the course provides the legal professionals with practical tools for dealing with cases of violence against women and domestic violence with respect to a human rights and victim centred approach.