The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and its regional partners (the Human Rights Center of the University of Sarajevo, the Croatian Helsinki Committee in Zagreb and the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights in Podgorica (CEDEM)) have successfully cooperated on the first phase of a three-year project, Retraining Lawyers in Transition Countries of Southeast Europe. The goal of the project is the re-education of the rule of law, human rights and humanitarian law to a target group of law professionals who were subject to a system of education that did not provide them with an opportunity to be properly introduced to the international promotion and protection of human rights.Participants were members of the legal profession including lawyers active in various branches of government, the judiciary, and representatives of private practice active in Bosnian-, Croatian- and Serbian-speaking parts of Southeast Europe. Participants were selected for their direct involvement in human rights protection as “guardians” of the rule of law, and as the best future multipliers of knowledge (i.e. lecturers, course organisers, university professors or alternative-education trainers.
For the first phase, five ten-day long training seminars were organised in the in Opatija (Croatia), Beograd, Petrovac (Montenegro), Sarajevo, and Dubrovnik, reaching a total audience of 150 selected individuals. In each programme, active participation was promoted by a balance between lectures, case studies, panel discussions and moot courts.
Project web page http://www.seelawyers.net has been established, updated and maintained during the whole project in four languages (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and English). The web page provides information about the project (programs, lists of participants, materials and documents) but also other information relevant for the human rights practitioners, links to the most useful web pages dealing with human rights issues and links to the partner organizations.
