Summer internship programme with the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights is already underway

On Monday, 4 July, the Legal Department of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights started this year’s edition of the summer student placement programme.

The seven new interns, law students from Białystok, Szczecin, Kraków, Lublin and Warsaw, participate in the work of the initial review team and are involved in the Foundation’s key programmes, including the Legal Intervention Programme and the Strategic Litigation Programme.

The interns are responsible for developing comprehensive reports on cases and analysing possible legal actions in the cases reported to the Foundation. ‘I hope that with this intern programme I will find out how to effectively handle human rights cases’, says Anita Garnuszek, a student of the University of Warsaw.

The interns will also be monitoring and observing court proceedings.

They will have an opportunity to take part in meetings and seminars with the HFHR’s lawyers. The meetings will centre around a number of issues concerning human rights protection. ‘One thing I’m especially looking forward to are the meetings covering issues of international criminal law and proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights’, explains Marcin Łukowski of the University of Białystok.

The internship programme will run until 29 July. For the entire duration of the programme, the students will be supervised by a Foundation lawyer who will offer them the chance to take part in additional projects such as drafting publications on the basis of the norms of the European Court of Human Rights case-law.