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Description
When it comes to support for human rights, each society has to constantly develop and get educated. The need to implement the activities under the project proposed stems from the identified insufficient capacity of the legal profession to defend fundamental rights and freedoms in line with international standards laid down in treaties ratified by Bulgaria, the absence of university education in human rights which can provide adequate knowledge about the standards of application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the EU Charter in Bulgaria and concentration of knowledge in experts of a limited number of civil society organizations. The project aims to reach various representatives of the legal profession through different activities, increase their knowledge, experience and sensitivity about the issue of fundamental rights and freedoms and thus contribute to better application of the established standards. The setting up of a community of young jurists and the training of lawyers will help contribute to the development and sharing of knowledge and skills among the professionals from across Bulgaria. Dissemination of up-to-date legal information and strategic litigation will raise the level of knowledge of the standards among judges and representatives of the executive power, increased knowledge that will result in a change in the case law and legislation. As a result of the project 180 lawyers from different regions are expected to attend a three-day thematic training, 36 editions of the Human Rights Newsletter will be published, 10 legal opinions to national institutions and 3 opinions to the Committee of Ministers will be drafted and at least 10 strategic cases will be initiated. A community of young jurists who have attended practical and theoretical training will be set up. The direct beneficiaries of some of the project activities will be the public institutions which have received the legal opinions.
Summary of project results
The project aims to address the improvement of implication on a national level - legislative, judiciary and executive the international standards developed in international law. During the project the lawyers who on the project had to draft opinions, file applications, provide legal aid and conduct different classes on the topic of human rights. Unfortunately, we leave in a divided society from sociological and political point of view so the main challenge was how to persuade different institutions, courts, members of parliament, Constitutional Court and the executive branch that international human rights standard are the tool to identify the problems that divide the society and to suggest how to solve these problems. As a human rights organization, we approach this project and gave all the energy and enthusiasm with the understanding that promotion of human rights in national level is never ending process. For that reason, we tried to work with young colleagues and to point our efforts and knowledge and address the needs of young professionals. Most of our documents, papers, opinions that me produced could be found on our web page.
Our projects aim was to promote and help national institutions to implement international human rights standards in their everyday work and in the process of executing their powers provided by the legislation and the Constitution.We concentrated our work in several directions.The first one is education. We developed and organized academy for human rights in which format we provide legal training to almost 150 people from different professions, mostly lawyers. We also developed and organized 12 discussions and lectures on different interesting and important topics concerning recent legal issues and topics that are of great interest to the society.Second, we identify and litigate more than 10 strategic cases. We initiate and participate as a lawyers in 42 court proceedings in different levels - from first instance courts, through Supreme Administrative Court and finishing to Strasbourg Court.Third, we systemize, translate and summarize leading case law of the ECtHR and publish this papers on our web page.Fourth, we drafted 4 communications to the Committee of Ministers of Council of Europe regarding execution of ECtHR’s judgments.We provide legal training to more than 200 peoples; litigate 42 court’s instances, summarize a plenty of ECtHR judgments in Bulgarian and uploaded them for free in our web page; prepared 4 communications to the Committee of Ministers of Council of Europe and more than 10 opinions to different Bulgarian government institutions, mainly Bulgarian Constitutional Court in their request to furnish cases dealing with human rights issues.
One of the main indirect outcomes which we think is very important is that the institution like The Committee of Ministers and the Bulgarian Constitutional Court are persuaded that we could provide them with competent opinions on issues concerning human rights which are put in their agenda.