On 19 and 20 August the INGO “Committee Against Torture” held the training for legal practitioners “Implementation of Articles 3, 5 and 6 of the European Convention in the practice of domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights”.
The training was led by a practicing lawyer with the Law Office “Semenyako, Grib and Partners” (St. Petersburg), PhD candidate in law, legal secretary of the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights (2008-2011) Sergey Golubok and by lawyers of the Committee Against Torture: Olga Sadovskaya and Anton Ryzhov. Over 30 practicing lawyers who came to take part in the event were introduced to specific features of the European Court of Human rights procedure and Implementation of Articles 3, 5 and 6 of the European Convention in its practice.
The speakers shared their impressions concerning the event.
Sergey Golubok: “My objective was to show the importance of applying the European Convention, as interpreted by the Court, in the first place, in national courts, and to tell the lawyers about the practical opportunities available. I hope, I have managed to bring this home to legal practitioners, that they should keep the European convention in mind not to complain under its Articles before the Court in Strasbourg, but to make good use of it before domestic courts. I believe, that a district or city court is “more powerful” than the European one, and domestic courts are the place where they should seek justice in. A district court can impose a custodial sanction or release a person, whilst the European court can deliver neither of these decisions”.
Olga Sadovskaya: “Our organization has rich experience of practice before the European Court. Sergey Golubok for three years worked as a legal secretary of the ECHR Registry and knows its work from the inside. Considering our knowledge, we wanted to make lawyers practicing in Nizhny Novgorod familiar with the means we use; this is for those lawyers whose practice is not connected closely enough with the ECHR for them to use its legal principles and case-law before domestic courts effectively. We have conducted the training for them to change national law-enforcement and judicial practice for the better and to increase the level of legal culture in the region”.