Overview

General overview of the Institute


Genoveva Tisheva – Director of the BGRF and the WHRTI, Christina Zampas - CRR, Isabel Marcus – NEWW – Institute partners, organisers and lecturers;

The Institute is a unique initiative of NEWW, implemented by the BGRF in cooperation with NEWW and the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), which is aimed at building the capacity of young lawyers from CEE/CIS for litigation on women’ s rights issues. The Institute started in May 2004 thanks to the support of Open Society Institute - Budapest, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Global Fund for Women and Mama cash. It takes place in Bulgaria and is implemented through four one-week sessions and activities between the sessions in the course of two years. Currently, the implementation of the Institute is coordinated by Genoveva Tisheva - Director of the BGRF.

The overarching objectives of the Institute are to:

  1. Articulate regional and country level litigation strategies on women’s human rights in CEE/NIS.
  2. Build the capacity of lawyers in CEE/NIS to litigate women’s human rights cases at the country and regional levels.
  3. Support on-going women’s rights litigation efforts in CEE/NIS and seed new women’s rights litigation.
  4. Facilitate the development of strategic relationships among the women’s human rights litigation community and mainstream human rights groups undertaking human rights litigation in CEE/NIS.

BGRF, NEWW and CRR undertake to achieve these goals through a collective process that is mindful of the various cultural and legal contexts present in CEE/NIS.

The Institute is a first-of-its-kind endeavor in CEE/NIS, and in the long-term will contribute towards the development of a new area of jurisprudence currently underdeveloped and underutilized. The three main issues the Institute will focus on are:

The Institute will take a three-prong approach to developing the jurisprudence in the these three main fields of women’s rights: will examine existing legal theories that are currently applied to women’s human rights violations, will explore existing anti-discrimination legal theories, will develop new legal theories that have not yet been articulated or applied.
The Institute is convened every six months and includes the same group of participants throughout the two-year project period. Specific litigation activities will be both continued and launched by participants between the Institute sessions, supported by the BGRF, NEWW, the CRR and other partner organizations, and the Institute expert committee.

Participants in the first session of the second round of the WHRTI with lecturers and participants in the first round of the WHRTI

Successful start of the second round of the Women’ s Human Rights Training Institute - WHRTI /2007- 2009/

a joint initiative of the Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation/BGRF/, the Network of East-West Women /NEWW/ and the Center for Reproductive Rights /CRR/

This unique international project is implemented for the second time in Bulgaria in the period June 2007- May 2009. The main objective of the Institute is building the capacity of lawyers in CEE for bringing women’ s rights cases at international level- before the ECtHR, the CEDAW Committee, the Human Rights Committee. The focus areas of the training in the Institute are violence against women, reproductive rights of women and gender discrimination in employment. The project comprises also maintaining and supporting the network of fellows of the Institute and supporting strategic litigation.

After a thorough review /about 70 applications were received/, the partners selected 20 participants from the region. The First session took place in Sofia in the period 9-13 November 2007. The agenda contains sessions on:

- International human rights law instruments and on the main general issues of feminist jurisprudence

- Gender Based Violence and Domestic Violence

- TIW and Sexual exploitation

- Reproductive Rights

- Gender equality in employment

The pool of lecturers comprise Prof. Maja Eriksson /Sweden/ and Dr. Ivana Radacic /Croatia, fellow of the Institute, Prof. Isabel Marcus /USA, NEWW/ and Genoveva Tisheva /BGRF/, Milena Kadieva /Bulgaria, fellow of the Institute/, Colette de Troy / Belgium, Christina Zampas /CRR/ and Dr. Adriana Lamackova /Slovakia, fellow of the Institute/, Daniela Draghici /Romania/, Dr. Susanne Burri /The Netherlands/, Plamenka Markova /Bulgaria/.

After the session a meeting of the fellows of the first round of the WHRTI took place /14- 15 November/. The participants in this meeting decided to establish a new European Network of Feminist Lawyers for strategic litigation on gender equality and women’ s rights.

The Second session will take place in the period 3-9 April 2008 in Bulgaria and will focus on the main international mechanisms for protection of women’ s rights in the three thematic fields and on the existing case law.

Two moot - court sessions will follow in the fall of 2008 and in Spring 2009 - on using the ECtHR and the CEDAW Optional Protocol for the protection of Women’ s rights.

The Institute is active since 2004 thanks to the support of OSI - Budapest, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Global Fund for Women and Mama cash.

Partners - BGRF- Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation , Prof. Isabel Marcus, NEWW- Network of East- West Women and Christina Zampas, CRR- Center for Reproductive Rights