Post by: Hyejin Yun
It has already been two weeks since I have started my
internship in Strasbourg. I am currently working for the Venice Commission (“Commission”),
which is the Council of Europe’s advisory body on constitutional matters.
On the first day after getting a badge from the main
building of Council of Europe, I was introduced to the members of the
Commission who were from the diverse countries by my supervisor Mr. Gael. They
all happily welcomed me and I got a feeling that I will definitely love this
place. Then I had a chance to attend a plenary session which is held every
Monday in which all the members of Venice Commission come together and discuss
the agenda for about an hour. The first meeting was quite hectic because the
Commission had to provide urgent opinion for the Republic of Moldova. It was
really interesting to hear people discussing over the constitutional matters in
countries all over the world to help the states bring their legal and
institutional structures into line with international standards in the fields
of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
After the meeting, I got some tasks from the people I
met in the meeting and worked on those for the first week. Since Mr. Gael is in
the Elections and Political Parties Division of the Commission, the first task
that I got from his colleague was to index the Law on Parliamentary Elections
of Turkey based on the thesaurus, which was similar to categorizing the
provisions for the database. At first, it took me some time to get used to the
thesaurus, but I used some supplementary resources such as the Code of Good
Practice in Electoral Matters and studied by myself to finish the task. In the
second week, I got another task which was to do a comparative research on the
legal basis of the functional immunity of ombudsman in countries including the
member states of the Commission, South Africa and some Asian countries. This one was a little bit more interesting
because through comparative analysis, I could see the degree of compliance of
the country to the Commission’s ombudsman principles. Also, I felt very
responsible because I was informed that the result of the research will be used
later on for giving advice to the countries that still don’t have a proper
ombudsman system.
Other than working in the office, I also had a chance
to visit European Parliament and attended a session of debates on cases of
breaches of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. The first topic was
what should be the stance of European Parliament in promoting freedom of
expression in Burundi in relation with the four journalists being captivated in
the country. The second one was about the recent terrorist attacks against
Christians on Christmas day in Nigeria. According to the instruction by the
president, the speakers took turns and made an assertion on what the European
Parliament should do. It was interesting to see the people discussing over the
matters happening in the opposite part of the world, and debating how to make
this world a better place.
Everyday, I am amazed to see how important this small
city can be and I have come to love this city so much. I have four weeks left
for my internship, so I will try to use time wisely, learn more and work hard
for the grace of God.
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