Activity Details (ID# 4588)

Activity Synopsis

The general objective of the training seminar was to present to the judges and prosecutors from Azerbaijan the general principles developed by the European Court of Human Rights concerning Article 10 of the ECHR and its application as regards defamation, insult, criticism of public figures, privacy, incitement to hatred, access to information, protection of sources, state secrecy and whistle-blowing.

Besides this general objective, there was also a particular practical objective to examine two case studies related to some of the explained subjects and prepared by the two CoE experts, namely Mr Vincent COUSSIRAT-COUSTERE, Professor of Public Law at the University of Lille II (France) and Ms Fatos ARACI, Lawyer at the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights.
 

The seminar was very well organised. Council of Europe documents concerning freedom of expression, translated into Azeri, were distributed to the participants (Case law concerning Article 10 of the ECHR, a number of Recommendations concerning freedom of expression adopted by the Committee of Ministers).

The experts’ presentations were informative and provoked active participation on the part of judges and prosecutors in the discussion. They were especially interested by presentations and cases concerning defamation, privacy and criticism of public figures. They discussed similar cases in their country and compared the decisions with European Court decisions.

Given that issues concerning defamation, privacy and criticism of public figures are extremely sensitive in Azerbaijan, the discussions of these topics took most of the time. Hence, topics related to protection of sources or state secrecy were left for discussion during a follow-up activity in November 2003.

Given the high level of the magistrates, they were quite well informed about several principles concerning Article 10 and the Convention in general. At the same time, they confessed that the Convention is not applied on an every day basis. Some magistrates are still hesitant to clearly apply the standards of the European Court as concerns defamation or criticism of political figures. Several participants underlined the fact that the Azeri press is too provocative sometimes and not very professional in the way it criticises the public figures. Examples of unjustified defamation were presented.
 

At the end of the seminar, an evaluation questionnaire was distributed to the participants. According to the replies, most participants were interested in Article 10 case law and in ECHR issues in general. They suggested further follow-up activities, expressing their wish to continue this kind of trainings, in order to become more familiar with the ECHR and to be able to apply in their daily practice the principles developed in the case law related to Article 10. 

Judges and prosecutors of high courts

 

Mr Vincent COUSSIRAT-COUSTERE, Professor of Public Law at the University of Lille II (France)
Ms Fatos ARACI, Lawyer at the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights
 

Mr Eugen CIBOTARU, Media Division, Directorate General of Human Rights