: 
2005 Jean-Pictet International Humanitarian Law Moot Court Competition
NYU School of Law Team
English-Speaking Session, Collonges-la-Rouge, France, 2005
Anna Canvar, Elisabeth Genn and Marinus Loubert traveled to Collonges-la-Rouge, France, in June to participate in the competition. As a team, they came from three very different backgrounds and were at different stages of their legal education. One was a second year law student, another a first year, and the third an LL.M. student with a law degree from a European country. Nevertheless, they all shared each other's interest in and their enthusiasm for international legal issues. In the end, the diversity was a strength as they all brought different, but important, skills to the team.
Prior to the competition a series of documents were distributed by the organizers every ten days, and the documents covered the range of public international law subjects relating to situations of armed conflict: applicability of international humanitarian law, protected persons, humanitarian action, methods and means of warfare, international criminal law, international human rights law, international refugee law, and other less defined areas such as the “political use of international humanitarian law” and “current challenges for international humanitarian law.” Each document asked students to research a series of “fundamental concepts,” as well as read dozens of articles and books on the topic at hand. Consequently, the team spent a lot of time preparing the documents. They produced weekly discussion papers summarizing the load of books and articles that were recommended as priority reading. In addition, they met twice a week to discuss the issues and tried, if time permitted, to do as many hypothetical mock situations as possible.
The competition itself was extremely well organized and expertly run. The organizers had clearly put in a tremendous amount of work into the logistics of the competition, but more importantly into the pedagogy behind it. The competition focused on the practice of international humanitarian law, and teams were judged primarily on their knowledge of international humanitarian law and their capacity to evaluate available information to determine critical elements which directly relate to its implementation. Additionally, the teams were judged throughout the competition on their knowledge of public international law; their demonstrated ability to work within the moot court simulations; their demonstrated respect for the work, cultures and opinions of other teams; their team work and commitment to the competition; their capacity to argue and ability to listen to others; and the quality of oral expression.
The first full day of the competition consisted of a set of substantive legal lessons in the morning, focusing on the work of the International Committee for the Red Cross as well as the protection under international humanitarian law for humanitarian workers and organizations. The afternoon introduced us to the style of the competition itself with a mock plenary session, an exercise in which all 15 teams that comprised our competition group prepared a set of legal issues and gathered together to discuss them. This first introduction to the competition gave the participants a sense of how the process would unfold over the coming days and the kind of work they would be expected to perform.
The rest of the competition progressed according to a fixed schedule. Each morning at 8 o’clock, the organizers would distribute a fact pattern containing a set of legal issues to be addressed. Each team would have anywhere between 20 minutes and a couple of hours to spot the issues concerned and develop legal arguments from an assigned vantage point. Through the course of the competition, participants were able to experiment with a variety of perspectives, at times representing different actors in the Red Cross movement or human rights organizations, at others zealously defending the interests of a state. On the average day, each team would participate in two to three sessions in the morning and about the same number in the afternoon, usually based on a different but related set of facts that were distributed immediately after lunch.
The format of the sessions themselves was quite varied in order to test and develop the teams’ abilities in a variety of settings. Some of the sessions were bilateral, meaning that each team would meet individually with members of the jury and be asked to present its material and respond to questions on the spot. These sessions were the most dynamic and also tended to be the shortest. Other sessions involved anywhere between three and five teams meeting simultaneously with jury members. The tasks here were usually more collaborative, aiming to develop a common strategy or perspective on the legal issues. A variation on these sessions were meetings among teams in which the jury would remain silent and allow the teams to run the discussions themselves. The challenge here was to combine effective presentation of the legal issues with strategic attention to the process of the meeting itself. The teams that were strongest in these sessions were able to set the agenda and in some ways to shape the presentations of other teams as well. Finally, the most intensive sessions were plenaries, which joined all fifteens teams in our group in a full-scale debate, lasting from one and a half to two and a half hours. A wide variety of positions were often represented, and teams were expected to advocate for their side but to listen carefully and to integrate the points made by other teams in order to move the discussion forward. The judges noted that NYU School of Law put forth a "strong team of convincing speakers" showing "committment and a willingness to improve throughout the competition." Additionally, the judges mentioned that this "team was particularly good at communicating its knowledge," and that it "made useful interventions that signalled their understanding."
Throughout the week, the NYU School of Law participants also met and spoke with teams from around the world about their perspectives on international law and got to know the organizers and jury members who provided the team with insights into the rewards of humanitarian work as well as its challenges. The NYU team wrote: "The Pictet isn’t just about competition. It’s also an opportunity to learn, meet amazing people and grow immensely as a lawyer, advocate and individual. Teams will not get all that they can from the experience unless they take in all of these opportunities."