On 7-9 September 2026, the Council of Europe Project “Protecting the rights of Ukrainian children and ensuring child-friendly justice” in cooperation with the Prosecutor General’s Office and Prosecutor’s Training Center of Ukraine have launched the training programme for juvenile prosecutors “Professional Development Programme for Juvenile Prosecutors: Strategies for Conducting Criminal Proceedings Involving Children”.
Hilde Haug, Deputy Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine, underlined in her welcome address to participants - “The training aims to bridge the gap between international standards and their practical application. The relevance of the event relies in supporting Ukrainian prosecutors in making informed, child-centred decisions while effectively fulfilling their procedural role through gaining the new knowledge and skills aimed at integrating child-friendly procedures and practices based on specific scenarios, including in the conditions of martial law”.
Participation in the training programme will contribute to developing prosecutors’ professional competencies in strategic planning and preparation for and participation in criminal proceedings involving children, taking into account the child’s individual needs and best interests, the prosecutor’s procedural tasks, work with evidence, risk management and effective interagency cooperation. The war has added new challenges within the area of child friendly justice and that this is also one reason why it is important for prosecutors to get such training in how to handle these new challenges related to dealing with children in the justice system.
25 prosecutors (5 males and 17 females) from 5 Ukrainian regions (Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Poltava, Lviv and Kropyvtskyi) participate in the programme, which consists of 4 Modules and will last 16 days in hybrid format.
The Council of Europe Project “Protecting the rights of Ukrainian children and ensuring child-friendly justice” is implemented by the Council of Europe in the framework of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine ‘Resilience, Recovery and Reconstruction’ for 2023-2026.
