The training built upon an earlier human rights training that had been organized by LeIP. The participants were lower court judges with 5-15 year experience. The topics covered included the history and politics of human rights, international human rights in national jurisdictions, non-discrimination and equality, freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression, human rights in Norway (by the National Institution for human rights and by a Norwegian judge), the presumption of innocence and investigative interviewing, economic, social and cultural rights, and business and human rights. The final session was a moot exercise.
Participants evaluation forms showed a very high level of satisfaction with the course overall, and also with all the specific sessions. All respondents who answered considered it “very likely” that they would apply knowledge from the course in their future work as judges. It should be noted that such participant evaluations forms are not an accurate way to monitor the impact human rights training.
Initially, the training had been planned as an intensive one-week training in Oslo, but the format was changed due to the pandemic.
TESTEMONIES (Roughly translated)
- “This training has enrichened our knowledge about how human rights should be enforced, instead of merely encouraging us to enforce human rights”
- “This advanced human rights training has been very useful, and applicable for court practice in Indonesia, both for criminal law matters and for administrative law matters, the examples of cases have also been relevant for Indonesia.”
- “This human rights training expanded my horizon and ‘thought repertoire’, about humans and rights. Although, on some of the topics I could not let myself go from the values I held beforehand, and indeed, my goal was not to do that. However that may be, the knowledge about human rights... constitute another way to look for what’s right/true”
- “This human rights training was very good and very useful in expanding our horizon and knowledge for us judges, who can [now] better understand and apply human rights principles in carrying out our tasks.”
- “This human rights training is very useful for us judges, as the last enforces for human rights enforcement in Indonesia. [It] gives very much understanding about how human rights should be applied. The speakers were very competent […]”
