On Friday, 23 November 2018, a delegation of 6 trainee lawyers accompanied with 3 lawyers from PCHR’s Legal Unit concluded their tour in The Hague in Netherlands.
This tour comes as part of a project in cooperation with Bertha Foundation to host 6 fresh law graduates from the Gaza Strip to be trained at PCHR for 2 years. The program aims at preparing Palestinian lawyers to use international mechanisms (International Jurisdiction and International Criminal Court) as part of a plan to increase the number of young lawyers all over the world to defend the human rights and justice.
PCHR’s lawyers initiated the tour program, which started on 20 November 2018, with visits and meetings, including a visit to the headquarters of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and be acquainted withits divisions. The visit included attending hearings held for persons accused of committing crimes against humanity. After that, PCHR’s delegation met with the supervisors on the Bertha Justice Fellowship Program that sponsored and embarrassed the idea of the tour and locally and internationally funded it. The trainee lawyers also watched a Palestinian documentary that was displayed in the Documentary Film Festival, which is currently being held in Amsterdam City.
On 22 November 2018, PCHR’s delegation visited the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) where a joint workshop was held on the procedures of criminal investigation into international crimes. The workshop was attended by Colonel Desmond Travers and Criminal Investigation Expert, Chris Cobb-Smith.
On 23 November 2018, the educational tour was concluded by a visit to the Headquarter of International Court of Justice and the head office of Palestine Mission in The Hague where the delegation met with Palestine’s Ambassador Rawan Suleiman. The meeting discussed the latest developments in Palestine’s file before the ICC.
The tour is scheduled to resume in Geneva, Switzerland, in the next days to hold meetings and visits to a number of international bodies. The tour program continues until Friday, 30 November 2018, and will be concluded in Berlin, Germany.
It should be noted that this educational tour is the first of its kind in which PCHR was able to carry out after several attempts in the previous years due to the difficulty of movement as a result of the closure on the Gaza Strip.
The implementation of this international and educational tour for the fresh lawyers and their involvement in these international bodies aims at transferring PCHR’s accumulated experiences to this generation of youth, so they learn, develop and maintain these experiences in order to create a new generation of lawyers armed with the international legal mechanisms to fight for justice and law and prosecute the perpetrators for a world governed by the rule of law and not the law of the jungle.