San Jose, Costa Rica. October 26, 2020.- Today Judge Humberto Antonio Sierra Porto of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights attended with Íñigo Salvador Crespo, Ecuador’s government attorney, the Opening Ceremony of the Course on Inter-American Procedural Law and Case Law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

This Refresher Course targets employees from the office of the government attorney and other interested officials of the State of Ecuador. It is part of a project between the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the office of Ecuador’s government attorney, designed to provide a deeper understanding of issues involving Inter-American procedural law and the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The six-week training will include a public forum, a distance introductory module over live videoconferencing systems, and a self-taught module consisting of pre-recorded lectures on the case law of the Inter-American Court.

The project was launched today with a forum entitled “Inter-American Procedural Law and Human Rights Protection in the Context of the COVID-19 Health Emergency,” led primarily by Ecuadorian public-sector officials. Participating in the forum were Judge Humberto Antonio Sierra Porto of the Inter-American Court, Amaya Úbeda de Torres, a scholar from the Council of Europe, Soledad García Muñoz, special rapporteur on ESCRs from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Luz Patricia Mejía Guerrero, technical secretary of the Follow-up Mechanism Press Release Inter-American Court of Human Rights I/A Court H.R._PR-106/2020 English to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI). It was attended by around 400 people, including staff members from the office of the government attorney, the constitutional court, the council of the judiciary, the public defense, public prosecutor, public universities, and various cabinet ministries of the State of Ecuador.

The Refresher Course will be attended by 100 employees from the office of the government attorney, the constitutional court, the public prosecutor, the national courts, the council of the judiciary and the public defense. The opening module of the training program will be offered as videoconference distance learning and will be taught by Juana María Ibañez, Silvia Serrano, Oscar Parra Vera and attorneys from the office of the registrar of the Inter-American Court.