The project’s main focus is to provide expert support to lawyers and non governmental organisations (NGOs) in the region working on women’s human rights cases. We intend to bring, or assist partners to bring, cases to the European Court of Human Rights. The cases we target are those that provide not only the individual with a remedy for specific women’s human rights violations, but are also likely to have a wider impact. This could be by changing the national law of the country concerned, raising standards within the region, expanding jurisprudence at the international level or contributing to broader policy debate or advocacy campaigns.

The focus of litigation work will be on violence against women, including domestic violence, sexual violence and sexual harassment.

We intend to organise two Litigation Surgery Meetings, in autumn 2008 and spring 2009. The autumn meeting will be held in Lviv, Ukraine for lawyers from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and South Caucasus. The meeting from spring 2009 will be held in London for lawyers from Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro. The aims of both meetings are:

1. To exchange views and strategies regarding challenges and opportunities in the area of strategic litigation and women’s rights issues
2. To further raise awareness among lawyers of developing domestic, regional and international standards on women’s rights issues
3. To discuss future co-operation (both between INTERIGHTS and attendees and between other participants) on women’s rights cases.

To enhance our work on women’s human rights we will host a Visiting Women’s Human Rights Lawyer for 6 months, during the project period. The six-months internship will be offered to a lawyer from Council of Europe states within Central and South Eastern Europe/ former Soviet Union and will begin in October 2008. Read more about the internship here.

We are grateful to the Open Society Institute for supporting the project.