Activity Details (ID# 5000)

Activity Synopsis

The objective of the seminar was to present to the judges and prosecutors from Novi Pazar and the surrounding region the general principles developed by the European Court of Human Rights concerning Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its application as regards defamation, insult, incitement to hatred, access to information, protection of sources, state secrecy and whistle-blowing. Two hypothetical case-studies were used for a role-playing exercise with the participants. 

The seminar was very well organised. Council of Europe documents concerning freedom of expression, translated into Serbian, were sent to the participants before the seminar (Case law concerning Article 10 of the ECHR, Media and Elections, Declaration and Recommendations concerning freedom of expression adopted by the Committee of Ministers and Conclusions of the Regional Conference on Defamation and Freedom of Expression organised in Strasbourg, 17-18 October 2002).

Despite an initial passivity on the part of the judges and prosectors, which has often been encountered at previous training seminars held in Belgrade and other regions of Serbia, they participated in a lively manner once they had understood the purpose of the first case-study exercise. It was apparent that their knowledge about the European Convention on Human Rights was rather limited, yet they showed great interest in the experts’ presentations and proved by the close of the activity that they had assimilated to some degree the methodology and analytical criteria applied by the European Court of Human Rights. In particular, the participants discussed a couple of domestic cases concerning criticism of public figures and made comparisons as to how similar cases would be dealt with at the level of the European Court.

Once again, the main concern expressed by the participants was the non-compliance of their national laws and regulations with European standards. They stressed that important changes would need to be carried out before these standards could be applied in their country.
 

In general, the seminar was successful. The conclusion of the evaluation questionnaire distributed to the participants at the end of the seminar, was that few participants had attended such seminars on the ECHR and that they had insufficient knowledge about the European system for the protection of human rights and the practice of the European Court of Human rights, especially concerning Article 10 of the ECHR.

All the participants expressed their wish to :

-attend further seminars of this kind, preferably for a longer duration with more emphasis on the practical training by means of the case-study exercises;

-become more familiar with the European Convention on Human Rights and the case law of the Court, especially in view of the recent accession of Serbia and Montenegro to the Council of Europe;

-invite the judges of the European Court to participate in any future seminars.
 

22 judges from the Municipal and District Courts of the Novi Pazar Region
9 prosecutors/apprentice prosecutors from the Municipal and District Prosecutors’ offices in the Novi Pazar Region
 

Ms Deirdre Fottrell, Barrister, Coram Chambers, London (United Kingdom)
Dr Bask Cali, Human Rights Fellow, University College London (Turkey)
 

Ms Lindsay Youngs, Media Division, Directorate General of Human Rights
Ms Ljiljana Breberina, Programme Adviser, CoE Office in Belgrade