Key to our commitment to protecting human rights in the Kurdish regions is the development of an independent capacity for human rights enforcement in the region.  To this end we have developed a coherent programme of regional training seminars with the aid of local partners, which work to promote the rule of law and democracy by transferring skills and building capacity among human rights defenders and advocates in the regions.

During 2010, we conducted a total of nine regional training sessions transferring knowledge of human rights and international legal principles to over 200 human rights defenders in the Kurdish regions in Turkey, Iraq, and Armenia. A further two workshops were held in London for members of the Diaspora, and for law students at York University.

• In the spirit of coalition-building, two cross-border workshops in Diyarbakir, Turkey brought together local human rights advocates from Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria with members of KHRP’s partner organisations to discuss strategies to promote the protection of human rights, and women’s rights
• Four seminars held in İstanbul and Cizre, Turkey, in Yerevan, Armenia, and in Suleymaniyah, Iraq, were dedicated to protecting against torture and ill-treatment
• A training session in Van, Turkey focused on the protection of women’s rights under CEDAW and the shadow report system. KHRP also led a women’s rights workshop during a seminar organised by international human rights organisation, Liberation, in London
• Protecting the Rights of the Child and practical approaches to monitoring the impacts of foreign investment on human rights were the topics of two further seminars respectively held in Diyarbakir, Turkey and Erbil, Iraq
• Finally, students were equipped with human rights knowledge that particularly focused on the Kurdish regions during a workshop organised at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York

In addition, we distributed our manuals on Taking Human Rights Complaints to UN Mechanisms and Taking Cases to the European Court of Human Rights, which are available in a number of languages relevant to the Kurdish Diaspora.

We have also continued to run our International Fellowship Programme in order to help facilitate an important exchange of legal and professional skills and expertise, and to promote cultural understanding between advocates within the regions and internationally. This brings selected advocates from the Kurdish regions or candidates of Kurdish origin who have a demonstrated commitment to working on human rights issues within the regions, to London to work alongside our experienced Legal Team. In 2009, KHRP hosted Fellow Jiyan Rojin, a female Kurdish law student from Berlin, Germany.