Purpose: The purpose of these workshops was to offer ECCHR’s expertise in human rights lawyering practice to students of the Humboldt Human Rights Legal Clinic, with which ECCHR has been cooperating for a number of years, in order to attract potential future participants of the ECCHR/Bertha Education Program and to consolidate the working relationship with the Clinic.

Target group: The workshop was offered advanced law students and junior graduate lawyers at Humboldt University law department and the Human Rights Legal Clinic.

Trainer: Claudia Müller-Hoff – currently based in Colombia – works as an external consultant for ECCHR’s Education Program, which she helped set up since 2009. She has practiced as a human rights lawyer and accompanier to human rights defenders and migrants in Germany, England and Colombia. She has held workshops for ECCHR about strategic litigation and transnational companies in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Content: The one-day session started – after some playful ice-breakers for the group to get to know each other – with the Shield-exercise, a painting exercise that invites participants to reflect on their own strengths, their vision and their motivations to work in the human rights sector. By sharing their paintings with others they could discover common ground and interest for each other.

Author: Claudia Mueller-Hoff, LL.M.
Legal Analyst
ECCHR – European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights