Human rights training for prison staff

In Chernihiv, the second seminar of the training course ‘Human Rights Training in the Penal System of Ukraine’ was held as part of the all-Ukrainian educational programme ‘Understanding Human Rights’, initiated by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.
The aim of the seminar was the development and testing of a human rights training course for the staff of the State Penal Service. The participants were employees of the department's territorial offices. The seminar was organised by the NGO ‘M’ART’ (Chernihiv) with the assistance of the Department for the Execution of Sentences and with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. Over the course of five days, 18 participants discussed issues regarding the conduct of human rights training for State Penal Service personnel, teaching methodologies, and the structure and content of the future human rights training course. Working with them were Oleh Duka (Bila Tserkva Department School), Iryna Yakovets (research fellow), Ihor Ivankov (Head of the Criminal Law Disciplines Department at the Chernihiv Law College), Alla Hryhorenko (Senior Inspector of the Department), Oleksandr Voitenko (NGO ‘M’ART’), and Oleksandr Bukalov (NGO ‘Donetsk Memorial’).
The joint work of the system's staff and representatives of non-governmental organisations contributed to a better understanding of the system's problems, overcoming stereotypes in their perception of one another, the importance of familiarising prison staff with the role of human rights compliance in the rehabilitation of convicts, and the necessity of actively implementing international standards for the treatment of prisoners into the practice of the institutions.