Eight New Mexico high school students will be the only Americans to participate next month in the Model International Criminal Court mock trials in Poland, a simulation of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The students were selected by the nonprofit New Mexico Human Rights Projects (www.nmhrp.org), the one organization in the U.S. invited to attend and send students, according to a news release from the group.
The trip is nearly 100 percent funded by a German organization that supports projects with Israeli, German, Polish and U.S. high school students.
The selected New Mexican teens are:
⋄ Emily Ellis – Bosque Prep School
⋄ Annika Cushnyr – Bosque Prep High School
⋄ Daniel Gugliotta – Manzano High School
⋄ James Campbell – V. Sue Cleveland High School
⋄ Hannah Faulkner – Farmington High School
⋄ Laura Martinez – New America School
⋄ Mitchel Latimer – Roswell High School
⋄ Mallika Singh – Academy for Technology and the Classics
The MICC trials are set for Feb. 17-22 at the International Youth Center in Krzyzowa, Poland, about 210 miles southeast of Berlin. The youth center is a historical site where a German resistance group, the “Kreisau Circle,” fought against the Nazi regime and developed the plans for a democratic rebuilding of post-World War II Germany.
The New Mexico students will work in international teams with high school students from Germany, Poland and Israel. They will take on the roles of judges, prosecutors, defenders and observing journalists in three historical war crime cases from the Nuremberg Tribunals, the Former Yugoslavia Tribunal and the Rwanda Tribunal.
Real journalists and attorneys with expertise in international justice will provide guidance and training, organizers said. Students also will have an opportunity to tour Berlin, and to visit the Bundestag and the Brandenburg Gate.
“This is the third year that New Mexico Human Rights Project has been invited to take students to the MICC in Poland. It is truly an honor,” said Regina Turner, founder and executive director of NMHRP. “Several students from previous years who are now in college were inspired to pursue careers in international relations.”
NMHRP evaluated essays on international justice from 53 New Mexico high school students. The group’s panel of judges comprised the legal counsel for the Albuquerque FBI field office, a NM Court of Appeals Judge, a university professor and genocide scholar, and three National Board-certified high school English teachers.
More information about NMHRP can be found at www.nmhrp.org.