On 19-20 September 2018 in Ankara, the European Programme for Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) organised a seminar in the framework of the Project on “Protection of Rights of Refugees and Migrants in Turkey” for the staff of the Directorate General for Migration Management (DGMM). The participants discussed combatting human trafficking in the national and international context, with a particular focus on child trafficking. Among the themes debated were: human trafficking in the context of modern-day slavery, the legal framework of human trafficking and relevant case-law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Cassation, Turkey’s fight against human trafficking and international best practices to combat human trafficking. The definition and the elements of human trafficking crime within Turkish criminal law, and its comparison to similar crimes and case-studies on human trafficking in Turkey were analysed. The seminar gathered participants from the DGMM, the Ministry of Interior Directorate General of Migration Management, the OSCE, UNICEF, the European Court of Human Rights, the Council of Europe Ankara Programme Office, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, the Istanbul Bar Association and the Hacettepe University Law Faculty.

On 21 September 2018, the HELP/UNHCR online course on “Asylum and the European Convention on Human Rights” was launched in Ankara as part of the Council of Europe Project on “Protection of Rights of Refugees and Migrants in Turkey”. The online course will be implemented for a group of 119 participants, composed mainly of experts and lawyers of the Directorate General for Migration Management (DGMM), funded by the Human Rights Trust Fund and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented by the Council of Europe. The objective of the course is to strengthen the capacity of the staff of DGMM to develop a better understanding of the rights attributed to the asylum seekers and foreigners in general. The HELP/UNHCR online course on “Asylum and the European Convention on Human Rights” is available in English and in Turkish in the HELP e-learning online platform to any user – upon the creation of an account on the platform.