The Raoul Wallenberg Institute recently led a moot court competition at the Tunis Al Manar University in Tunisia with a long-term aim of advancing human rights legal education in the MENA region.
“The competition is established to increase the support of the justice sector actors in the use of human rights standards in courts,” says Samah Marmash, Raoul Wallenberg Institute Programme Officer based in Amman, Jordan.
Marmash says the participants were future members of the legal profession, namely, law students. In attendance were students from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Law Faculty at the University of Jordan, Palestinian University (Birzeit University), Algeria 1 University, Arab Beirut University (Human Rights Center), and Tunis Al Manar University (Faculty of Law and Political Sciences in Tunisia).
The two-day event at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences was the third moot court competition the institute has organized.
“This Competition also aims to advance and promote human rights legal education within the MENA region to provide law students with knowledge and tools to apply, or support the use of, human rights standards in court proceedings and rulings in their future legal daily practice,” says Marmash.
The institute’s programme in the MENA region for the years 2014-2016 aims to build the capacities of essential institutions, namely judicial institutes and law faculties. This is in order to allow them to integrate international human rights principles in education and training curricula, in order to guarantee that a growing number of legal professionals enjoy the knowledge and tools to implement and support the use of international human rights standards.
The winners
After the preparatory courses that took up the entire first day, during which the judges were able to evaluate the contestants, the Tunisian defense team consisting of students Amal Bouqara and Husni Al Jaljali won the first prize for the best pleading team, while student Lana Tariq Abdul Kareem Khader of Birzeit University in Palestine won the prize for best litigant. Moreover, the same student, along with Lana Ali Othman Nadaf of the same university won the prize for the best written pleading. Students Qusai Jamal Mohammad Barghouthi and Faiha Mousa Abed Rahimi from Palestine won the prize for the best written defense memorandum.