40 Latvian legal professionals (judges and judicial assistants) will take the Council of Europe HELP online course on Introduction to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), following the virtual launch organised in co-operation with the Latvian Judicial Training Centre.

The event was opened by Solvita Kalniņa-Caune, Director of the Latvian Judicial Training Centre, and Ana Medarska – Lazova from the Justice and Human Rights Training Division of the Council of Europe.

At the event, the participants benefitted from a presentation on the ECHR in the Latvian legal system, by Lasma Liede, senior lawyer in the Registry of the ECtHR. Furhermore, they understood the process of execution of the ECtHR judgments in the Latvian context, through an intervention of Yulia Gendlina, lawyer at the Department for the Execution of the Judgments of the ECtHR of the Council of Europe.

The HELP national tutor, judge Anna Mihailova, presented the course schedule and the requirements for the succesfull course completion.

The participants will take the course until the end of the year, when the succesful participants will be jointly certified by the Council of Europe HELP Programme and the Latvian Judicial Training Centre.

The HELP course on Introduction to the ECHR and the ECtHR, updated in 2020, has been taken by more than 18000 users of the HELP online platform, in its various language versions. It has been translated in 24 languages and adapted and launched in 17 countries.

It is also available for autonomous self-learning. Once a user completes the self-learning version of the course, he/she can print out the so-called HELP ‘statement of accomplishment’.