340 CASES FROM ARMENIA IN THE EUROPEAN COURT
Support A1+!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 U.S. 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.
