Armenian Institute for Development together with its partners Netherlands Helsinki Committee, the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights (INTERIGHTS) and assistance of American Bar Association (ABA/ROLI) Armenian office, OSCE Yerevan office and British Embassy Yerevan on 30-31 October 2009 has held the training in the framework of the project of "Strategic Litigation in Caucasus" that was mostly devoted to "Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights" topic. Training has passed in Yerevan, Armenia Marriott Hotel. Some 35 representatives of civil society, international organizations, advocates and judges participated in the event. From international human rights experts there were invited Yonko Grozev and Dina Vedernikova, as well as Arthur Grigoryan as local expert. This kind of events have the aim of constant training of Armenian lawyers and raising of their theoretical and practical knowledge as regards of the ECHR standards and the case-law of Strasbourg Court. "Protection of property rights is a fundamental human right and is critical to the establishment of the rule of law and for economic development", said the Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan, Ambassador Sergey Kapinos. "Armenian legislation and practice must protect individuals from disproportionate interferences with the right to property, as required by the European Convention for Human Rights." Arthur Grigoryan, a defense lawyer who led the training course, said legal analysis of recent cases of property being claimed for public interest showed that the legislative regulation was insufficient, and that domestic legal remedies failed to protect the affected property owners. He said he hoped that ongoing efforts by the authorities would provide adequate protection. Yonko Grozev has opened the first day of the training with the introduction into Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR. For this presentation among the participants there was distributed a hand-out on the concept of "possessions" (you can download this hand-out in English or in Russian) where there are brought the key case-law issues under Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR. This presentations was followed by the presentation of Arthur Grigoryan on the latest developments as regards of expropriation of property in Armenia. The second part of the first day was then devoted to two practical, interactive exercises for which participants were divided into two groups, i.e. 1) reading and analyzing of two judgments of the ECtHR on Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR (see judgments of Bulves AD v Bulgaria and Pressos Compania Naviera S.A. and others v Belgium in Russian) and 2) defining the term property under Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR. The first part of the second day of training was devoted to presentation of Yonko Grozev on some aspects of Article 10 of the ECHR which was followed by the corresponding practical exercise, i.e. discussion of three short description of cases under Article 10 of the Convention. The second half of the day was then wholly devoted to hypothetical case on Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR during which participants were divided into two groups, one group acted for Government and another - for the Applicant. After discussing the hypothetical case within the groups, participants reported back their arguments to general audience. |
