On 5 September 2022, the Council of Europe in cooperation with the Latvian Judicial Training Centre - EJTN  launched the HELP course on violence against women and domestic violence. This course, originally developed by the Council of Europe Gender Equality Division and the European Programme for Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) was adapted to the national legal and policy frameworks of Latvia and translated into national language. The course aims to provide high quality human rights training that will enable legal professionals from the Republic of Latvia to be more responsive to victims of violence against women and domestic violence and to apply, within national jurisdiction, international standards such as the Istanbul Convention and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

This hybrid launching conference was opened by Marta Becerra, Head of Co-operation Unit at the Council of Europe Gender Equality Division and Solvita Kalniņa–Caune, Director of the Latvian Judicial Training Centre. An introduction to the HELP Programme was provided by Ana-Maria Telbis from the Council of Europe HELP Unit, and Louise Hooper, Council of Europe expert, presented the HELP course on violence against women and domestic violence. The participants also benefited from an overview of relevant ECHR cases presented by Lāsma Liede, Senior lawyer at the Latvian unit of the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights and from a presentation of the Istanbul Convention made by Sabrina Wittman from the Secretariat of the Istanbul Convention Monitoring Mechanism.  Ilze Kurme, Director of the Children and Family Policy Department of the Ministry of Welfare of the Republic of Latvia shared the results of the bilateral project with the Council of Europe.

For the next three months 30 Latvian judges will follow the seven online modules of the course with the practical help and guidance of the national tutor, Ilze Celmina, judge of the Riga Regional Court of the Republic of Latvia.

The launching event and the online trainings are organised in the framework of the project “Ending violence against women: multi-country programme”.