Rio Rancho – A Cleveland High School student is among eight New Mexico high school students selected to participate in the Model International Criminal Court (MICC) mock trials in Poland next month.
James Campell and the seven other students were the only Americans selected for the MICC, a simulation of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. They were chosen by New Mexico Human Rights Projects, the one U.S. organization invited to attend and send students.
The MICC trials are Feb. 17-22 at the International Youth Center in Krzyzowa, Poland. The center is a historical site where a resistance group against the Nazi regime, the “Kreisau Circle,” planned a democratic rebuilding of post-World War II Germany.
With youth from Germany, Poland and Israel, students take on the roles of judges, prosecutors, defenders and journalists in three historical war crime cases from the Nuremberg Tribunals, Former Yugoslavia Tribunal and Rwanda Tribunal. Real journalists and attorneys with expertise in international justice provide guidance.
Students also will have an opportunity to tour Berlin and to visit the Bundestag and the Brandenburg Gate.
The other New Mexico students attending are Emily Ellis and Annika Cuchnyr, Bosque School; Daniel Gugliotta, Manzano High School; Hannah Faulkner, Farmington High School; Laura Martinez, New America School; Mitchel Latimer, Roswell High School; and Mallika Singh, Academy for Technology and the Classics.
“This is the third year that NMHRP has been invited to take students to the MICC in Poland,” said Regina Turner, founder and executive director of NMHRP. “… The opportunity has been a life-altering experience for all students participating.”
NMHRP received essays on international justice from 53 New Mexico high school students. Through a double-blind evaluation of submitted essays and interviews, judges selected the eight students.
The trip is nearly 100 percent funded by a German organization that supports projects with Israeli, German, Polish and U.S. high school students.