Mr. Gaetano Silvestri, President of the Scuola della Magistratura, speaking at the launching of the HELP/UNHCR Course on the ECHR and Asylum emphasised how this training tool may reinforce “a com-mon culture of the judicial protection of asylum”.

On 6 December 2016, the HELP Programme and UNHCR, in close cooperation with the Italian School of Magistracy, launched the HELP/UNHCR Course on “the ECHR and Asylum” for a pilot group of Italian civil and criminal judges, prosecutors and ombudspersons in Rome.

On 4 December, the arrivals by sea to Italy in 2016 reached almost 174,000 (compared to almost 154,000 in 2015), 24% of which came from the world’s top-10 refugee producing countries. Given the magnitude and the complexity of these mixed flows, the need to properly identify the persons in need of international protection is critical. As the ECtHR strongly emphasised in its A.C. and Others v. Spain judgment, despite the significant numbers, the States concerned are under the obligation to organise their judicial system to comply with the right to an effective remedy in ex-pulsion and asylum matters. The role of the judiciary is therefore fundamental to ensure a proper interpretation and implementation not only of international refugee law standards but also the EU asylum acquis and the ECHR standards, in line with the subsidiarity principle.

The HELP/UNHCR Course on “the ECHR and Asylum” is intended to support the Italian authorities in addressing these challenges. This is the first time that this training tool is being implemented in Italy (one of the first countries in the world to have recognised the right to asylum in its Constitution), while it has already been successfully rolled out for legal professionals in 9 countries across Europe from Spain to Russia.

"The launching of the course was mainly covered by the “HELP in the 28” Programme. This is a Programme funded by the EU and implemented by the Council of Europe using its HELP methodology. Under this Programme, the EU dimension of the UNHCR/HELP course has been reinforced."