Welcome to the course on Family Law & Human Rights!
The course has been developed thanks to EU support, as it is jointly financed by the “EU-CoE HELP in the EU” Project and the EU-CoE Horizontal Facility Action “Strengthening the Human Rights Ombudsman to fight discrimination”.
The course has been developed using the HELP methodology, in cooperation with the Children’s Rights Division of the Council of Europe.
Family law is a distinctive area of law because it is multi-layered (national, regional and international) and interdisciplinary (transcending private and public law, both domestically and internationally). Given the increasing mobility and internationalisation of the child and of families, it is also a complex topic.
The course discusses and analyses the influence of human rights law, notably Articles 8 and 12 (ECHR) on national family law. It addresses key cases of the European Court of Human Rights on Articles 8, 12 and 14 ECHR and explores relevant European and international instruments including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), with a view of showing how human rights law sets a minimum standard for family law in Europe. In the EU, although the substantive family law remains under the sole competence of EU countries, the EU is empowered to take measures concerning family law with cross-border implications on the basis of a special legislative procedure: all EU countries should agree (unanimity) and the European Parliament must be consulted.
The national differences in substantive family law can be bridged by private international law. The second perspective of this course is thus the rules on private international law in family matters. The process of harmonisation and unification of private international law within the EU and the work of the Hague Conference on Private International Law is given particular attention.
The course provides a comprehensive overview of International and European family law related standards, case-law and good practices. It is the first HELP course to provide a single resource on the topic, covering the extensive CoE standards and EU law, as well as soft-law instruments on the matter. It integrates training materials previously developed by the CoE and is complementary to the HELP courses on child-friendly justice and the other one on violence against women (both already available in several languages on the HELP e-learning platform).
You can find more information by accessing the COURSE BRIEF.
Please click on one of the language codes below to launch the new course in your preferred language
2019 version: eng | fra | bos | bul | ell | ita | lit | mkd | ron | rus | slo | spa | srp | ukr
Previous version: deu