US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE HOLDS TRAINING ON EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

ArmRadio.am
30.10.2006 13:08

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has organized a seminar
to educate trainers for Armenian prosecutors, judges, and advocates
on the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and on advanced case
studies. The seminar will be led by the Honorable Richard G. Stearns,
United States District Court Judge; Gediminas Sagatys, Senior Advisor
to the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania and Professor of Law
at Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius; and Henrikas Mickevicius,
Executive Director of the Human Rights Monitoring Institute in
Vilnius. The training seminar will last a day and a half and will
be held on October 30-31, as well as November 1-2, 2006. The seminar
will include advanced discussions and case studies of Articles 5 and 6
from the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as a comparative
analysis of the recent amendments to the Armenian criminal procedure
code with the ECHR. There will also be discussions on how the ECHR
has changed the constitutional, legislative, and case law landscape
in Lithuania, and lessons learned from this transition.

Armenia has been a signatory to the European Court of Human Rights
since 2002. This training is especially relevant since the number
of Armenian petitioners who have made applications to the Court has
increased from 89 in 2003 to 340 in 2005.

This will be Judge Stearns’s second trip to Armenia at the invitation
of the US Government. In June 2006, Judge Stearns conducted training
sessions for Armenian judges, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and
the Armenian Police Department on trafficking in persons issues,
and specifically on victims’ rights and the protection of witnesses.