On 13-17 May 2019 the Council of Europe organised in Gomel, Belarus, a five-day Spring School on Human Rights and Combating Discrimination for 35 law students from six universities of Belarus. The programme was built around the key grounds for discrimination, such as race, ethnicity, sex and gender, religion, disability and others, and included presentations and practical workshops delivered by leading experts – scholars and practitioners - in the subject matter. It also included a general introduction to the ECHR law and to the concept of non-discrimination. The School was opened by a keynote lecture by Mr Grigory Vasilevich, chair of the Constitutional Law department of Belarusian State University and the former Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Belarus, who spoke about the correlation between international human rights standards and Belarusian law and practice. One of the highlights of the School was a lecture by the judge of the European Court of Human Rights elected in respect of Malta, Mr Vincent De Gaetano, who also presided at the judges’ bench at a moot court – the closing exercise of the School.

The event was organised jointly with Belarusian State University and with the support of the Council of Europe Information Point in Minsk. It became the first of a series of training activities which are foreseen for students of regional law schools in the framework of the new two-year project “Strengthening the right to a fair trial in Belarusian criminal justice”, a part of the joint programme between the European Union and the Council of Europe “Partnership for Good Governance – II”.