Activity Details (ID# 6898)

Activity Synopsis

The objective of the seminar was to provide Ukrainian prosecutors with appropriate information on 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, privacy, protection of sources, state secrecy and whistle-blowing, as well as general information about the Court, its procedures and admissibility rules. This seminar was the first activity in the framework of the new two-year Joint programme between the European Commission and the Council of Europe for Ukraine.

 

The seminar was well organised. Many of the Council of Europe documents concerning Article 10 and the Convention in general (translated into Ukrainian) were distributed to the participants.

The participants were prosecutors from Kyiv and the regions. They listened attentively to the Council of Europe experts’ presentations, but during the time for discussion and for case-study exercises, the prosecutors were passive and it was difficult to encourage them to put questions or give their opinion about the experts’ presentations or the situation in Ukraine concerning Article 10 of the ECHR.

It was difficult to ascertain the reasons for this: it could be the result of their rather limited knowledge about the European Convention on Human Rights, it could also be due to the difference between the reality in Ukraine and European standards, it could also be the fact that most of the prosecutors had not attended such seminars before.
 

The general conclusion was that the participants were relatively passive during the discussions and the case-study exercises, but the conclusion of the evaluation questionnaire, distributed to the participants at the end of the seminar, was that the participants thought that the seminar was very useful for their professional education and that they would recommend this kind of seminar to their colleagues. They expressed their wish to have seminars on the same topic together with lawyers and representatives of the mass media. They also express their wish to have seminars on Articles 3, 4, 5, 6 and 14 of the ECHR. 

Prosecutors from Kyiv and Ukrainian regions 

Ms Valeria Lutkovska, Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine
Mr Claude Grellier, President of the Chamber, Appeal Court of Paris (France)
Mr Frédéric Gras, Barrister (France)
 

Mr Olexander Pavlichenko, Director of the Information Office of the Council of Europe in Kyiv, Co-ordinator of the Action Plan for the media in Ukraine
Ms Lejla Dervisagic, Media Division, Directorate General of Human Rights