ICC Moot Court Competition 2016
For the fourth consecutive year the Foundation has sponsored a Palestinian team to participate in the International Criminal Court Moot Court Competition. In 2016 we sponsored five students and their coach from Birzeit University, Ramallah. You can read the report of one of the students, Amjad Abu Lafi, down below.
‘My name is Amjad Abu Lafi, I’m a 4th year student at the Faculty of Law and Public Administration at Birzeit University in Ramallah, Palestine.
Participating in the International Criminal Court Moot Court Competition was an amazing and productive experience. Besides gaining great knowledge and experience, we had a great time in The Hague, the city of the International Courts and Tribunals.
How was the team of Birziet formed?
It all started last summer, when we started taking additional courses related to Public International Law as a preparation for the participation in the international moot court competitions. Later we were informed that Birzeit would participate in the ICCMCC for the first time. Dr. Halla Shoaibi then started interviewing the applicants and formed the team of Birzeit University.
Working on the memorials
The case we worked on the whole time was sent to us in November 2015. The day we received the case, we started reading and researching about each issue of the case. We had weekly, sometimes daily, meetings, with the team and even met during holidays.
From November 2015 and till February 2016 we finished and submitted our memorials. The language was one of the issues we had to face and, as it was our first participation, we had some issues with the formalities of the memorials. This researching period was a great experience and we learnt a lot about new materials, theories and creative argumentation.