The HELP online courses are interactive and visual. They cover various human rights related topics, reflecting the different areas of work of the Council of Europe.

While HELP courses focused on the European Convention on Human Rights at the beginning, it gradually moved to cover also other instruments like the European Social Charter or Council of Europe Conventions in key areas like data protection or bioethics. Furthermore, with European Union support since 2015, we include the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and relevant EU law in the courses specifically developed for European Union countries, in key areas that respond to the many serious challenges that Europe is facing. Thus, HELP courses are unique as they combine the EU and the Council of Europe law and case law, and help judges, prosecutors and lawyers to apply both systems in a practical and effective way.

HELP courses are developed in line with the HELP Methodology, jointly with the respective content entities of the Council of Europe, for example, the course Key human rights principles in Biomedicine was developed jointly with the Council of Europe Bioethics Unit, the course on Human Rights in Sports with the Council of Europe Sports Department, the course on Data Protection with the Data Protection Unit, the course on Labour Rights with the European Social Charter, the course on Violence Against Women with the relevant Council of Europe Division, the course on Refugee and Migrant Children with the Office of the Special Representative of the Council of Europe Secretary General for Migration and so on.

Lawyers from the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights are also involved in the development of the HELP online courses, to ensure the best possible reflection of the ECtHR case-law in the separate areas of law. Increasingly, HELP key partners such as EJTN, CCBE, FRA, UNHCR, OSCE/ODIHR etc. offer their expertise in the development of HELP courses.

The HELP online courses are hosted on the Council of Europe HELP e-learning platform. They can be taken as:

  • Selfstudy courses, available publicly for unlimited access to anyone who creates an account on the HELP online platform. If you would like to take any of the HELP courses for selflearning, just log-in with your HELP account on the HELP online platform and click on the language code under the picture of the course that you would like to take.
  • Tutored courses organised in cooperation with a national partner institution, usually national training institutions for judges and prosecutors (NTIs) or Bar associations (BAs). The HELP tutored courses are facilitated/moderated by a HELP certified tutor, who was trained by the HELP Secretariat. Successful participants in HELP tutored courses are certified jointly by the HELP Programme and the national partner institution. If you are a legal professional and you would like to take a tutored course, get in touch with the NTI or BA in your country, through the HELP Focal and Info Points.

Although the primary target group of the Council of Europe HELP courses are legal professionals (judges, prosecutors and lawyers), some interdisciplinary courses may involve other professionals (health and medical specialists, prison and probation staff, law enforcement, journalists, Ombudsperson staff, NGOs, etc.).

HELP course list