On 7 December 2021, the Council of Europe in co-operation with the National School of Judges of Ukraine, held the final webinar for a group of 26 judges as part of the training course on combating hate speech. This webinar was the fourth one of the training course started on 17 November 2021 and was organised in the framework of the EU - Council of Europe’s regional project “Strengthening access to justice for victims of discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes in the Eastern Partnership”.

This training course included 4 webinars and the specialised HELP course on combating hate speech. The training was facilitated by Kateryna Kotelva, judge of Halitskyi District Court of Lviv and Irene Fedorovych, expert in the field of combating hate speech. 

The training course evaluation showed that this type of training was very much appreciated, and the mix of introduction of human rights standards relevant in issues of hate speech and work on case studies was the appropriate approach. 

Ukraine has quite limited case law on the topic of combating hate speech. This type of training opportunities was welcome and will be continued in the future co-operation between the Council of Europe and the National School of Judges. 

The activity was organised within the framework of the project “Strengthening access to justice through non-judicial redress mechanisms for victims of discrimination, hate crime and hate speech in Eastern Partnership countries”, funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in the framework of the Partnership for Good Governance II.