Team “Iustitia” From Serbia New Champions of the Regional Moot Court Competition

Team “Iustitia” from Nis in Serbia became the winners of the 8th Regional Moot Court Competition held before the European Court of Human Rights and organised by Civil Rights Defenders in the Serbian city of Subotica.

The winner will now meet the champions of the Scandinavian Moot Court at the Trans-Regional Moot Court Finals, which will be held at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in November 2014. The runner up of this year’s competition was team “Vladimir Bayer” from Zagreb (Croatia) while the third place went to “Iudex” from Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina).

“This year’s finals had proven at least two things. First – there are no favourites in this competitions, but only teams that spent more time preparing then the others. Second – there are no hard feelings for losing a match, only strong willingness by the competitors to do better next time. To sum it up, i would say that all of the competitors have shown great energy and ambition to defend human rights in the future. As far as we are concerned, this future seems a lot clearer with these young people” said John Stauffer, Legal Director at Civil Rights Defenders.

Since 2007 when it was first established in the region, Moot Court had gathered more than 600 participants consisting of law students from regional universities who will hopefully become future human rights defenders. The event consists of an annual competition which gathers law students from Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia to participate in human rights related trial simulations. The Regional Moot Court was first organised in 2007 and is inspired by the Nordic Moot Court model, whose tradition goes back to 1984.