The Council of Europe’s Programme on Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP)

Its utility for university teaching

Abstract

Many universities will be teaching in the fields covered by the Council of Europe programme on human rights education for legal professionals, commonly known by the acronym ‘HELP’.  The topics covered by the HELP online courses are very broad and expanding all the time. As one might expect, they include courses on aspects of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the European Social Charter (ESC), as well as courses covering other significant conventions of the Council of Europe including areas such as bioethics, violence against women, the environment and human rights, trafficking in human beings, cybercrime and data protection. HELP courses also cover the European Union (EU) legal system, where applicable, by including the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and relevant EU law and jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU).

This note runs through how this might work and is designed to introduce university professors to the HELP programme and how it can be used in their teaching.