Objectives
In the frame of the cooperation with the Council of Europe, the ICDT summarized the lessons learned, shared Hungarian experiences, and co-organized an international conference with the Council of Europe on “The Promotion and Protection by National Human Rights Structures of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”

Background
The Council of Europe’s ‘Peer-to-Peer’ project aims at setting up an active network of independent non-judicial National Human Rights Structures (NHRS) with special focus on non-EU member states. The main tool of the project is the organization of workshops for practitioners from the NHRS. The Office of the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights organized a conference for the NHRS within the framework of that project and requested the ICDT to prepare a debriefing paper based on the lessons learned.

Project Description
The conference was held in Budapest on 2-3 December, 2008 and attended by about 50 people from the NHRS network representing 16 countries. The ICDT contacted the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor of the Republic of Hungary in order to secure a representative of the Hungarian Government to speak about the “Promotion and Protection by National Human Rights Structures of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”. For the preparation of the debriefing paper, an expert of the ICDT participated in the conference. Based on the feedback of the Commissioner’s Office the draft version was reviewed and edited. The final version of the paper was submitted to the CoE in the end of January 2009.