On April 12 2016, the Council of Europe, in collaboration with the Chief Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia, launched the HELP (Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals) distance learning course on anti-discrimination issues for Georgian prosecutors.
The course will last until the end of July and those prosecutors, who pass the final test, will obtain joint certificates from the Council of Europe and the Chief Prosecutor’s Office. The online course will be led by the national tutor, Ms Salome Shengelia, who has been trained on how to deliver HELP training in Strasbourg at the HELP training of trainers activity.
A model anti-discrimination course has been developed by international Council of Europe experts and it is adapted to the Georgian context. Thus the course contains references to Georgian cases, which make it even more interesting for Georgian prosecutors.
After completing the course, 22 prosecutors will already be capable to freely discuss anti-discrimination topics, easily identify hidden discrimination motives in the case files on which they work and generally be able to well substantiate their indictment bills when sending them to the Court in discrimination cases.
The launching was opened by Georgian Deputy Prosecutor Mr. Giorgi Gabitashvili, the Deputy Head of the CoE Office in Tbilisi, Ms. Ana Zec and Ms. Eva Pastrana, representatives of the HELP secretariat. The speakers highlighted the importance of the first ever distance learning course for the Chief Prosecutor’s Office and underlined the importance of HELP in the field of anti-discrimination. They also emphasised the significance of the unanimous adoption of a landmark anti-discrimination law in 2014, the creation of the equality body in the Public Defender's Office and the need for legal professionals in Georgia to implement it properly.
The HELP course is taking place under the EU/CoE Joint Project "Application of the European Convention on Human Rights and harmonisation of national legislation and judicial practice in Georgia in line with European Standards", which is funded through the Programmatic Cooperation Framework for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus.