by Jane Herlihy
At CSEL we emphasise the
importance of taking an interdisciplinary approach to decision making, in order
to bring together the best knowledge from the relevant fields. Through our work
with authorities internationally, we’ve been glad to see that the value of the
interdisciplinary approach is being increasingly widely understood by decision
makers, too. Early in June I travelled to Strasbourg to contribute to a Council of Europe (CoE) event bringing legal
and non-legal professionals together to extend practical skills for lawyers
working on human rights cases.
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| by zack lee @ flickr.com |
HELP, the European Programme for Human
Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) is a project of the CoE that
aims to support EU member states’ implementation of the European Convention
of Human Rights (ECHR) by ensuring adequate training in Convention
standards for legal professionals. HELP also promotes the dissemination across
member states of relevant case law from the European
Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). HELP aims to ensure that is embedded in the
training for all legal professionals, to ensure that national human rights
legislation is appropriately implemented, and the programme targets the key
legal actors in European asylum processes: judges, prosecutors and lawyers.
I was invited to bring CSEL’s expert knowledge of the psychological issues
relevant to credibility assessment into the HELP knowledge exchange process.
Working with human rights lawyer Flip Schuller,
I gave a presentation on the breadth of scientific psychological evidence
available to lawyers and decision makers considering claims for protection from
human rights abuses to 200 legal trainers from across the 47 EU member states.
The audience included judicial trainers, all attending in order to consider how
to incorporate other disciplines in their legal training.
With so many high-level legal trainers in one room, the conference
provided an excellent dissemination opportunity - and a chance to address
lawyers and decision makers who are considering not just the refugee
convention, but the wider world of protecting people from abuses of their human
rights. I’m looking forward to further work with the HELP network, and more
opportunities to take CSEL’s research findings to human rights defenders across
European jurisdictions.
