2025 Inter-American Human Rights Moot Court Competition
Celebrating 30th years!
2025 TOPIC:
HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND HUMAN RIGHTS
(May 19th - 23rd, 2025)
About the Competition
The Competition is a unique trilingual (English, Portuguese, and Spanish) event established to train law students on how to use the Inter-American human rights legal system as a legitimate forum for redressing human rights violations. Since its inception in 1995, it has trained over 4900 students and faculty participants from over 365 universities from the Americas and beyond. Written on a cutting-edge topic currently debated within the Inter-American system, the hypothetical case operates as the basis of the competition, and students argue the merits of this case by writing legal memoranda and preparing oral arguments for presentation in front of human rights experts acting as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
About 2025 registration:
Registration for the 2025 #IAMOOT will be open soon. Please be advised that in order to complete your registration, you must have a Google Account. When the Google Forms are open, keep in mind that you will have to click on the upper right button on this screen menu to access the registration forms. The button says: "Registration and other forms". You are required to be logged into your Google Account to provide all the requested information successfully. Furthermore, be advised that besides IAMOOT regular Google Forms, you will be required to fill out mandatory American University forms if you are paying via Credit Card. All relevant links are available on the right side of this menu. If any problem or question arises during your registration process, don't hesitate to get in touch with us at iamoot@wcl.american.edu
Please kindly note that most of the links below, “Registration will be open soon,” remain inactive. Bear with us. IAMOOT 2025 Registration will be open by November 2024
30th Anniversary - Rules Changes
The Inter-American Moot Court Competition Technical Committee has decided to implement substantial changes to the Competition's rules for our 30th anniversary celebration. These changes are based, among others, on the feedback from the teams, coaches, and judges. The Technical Committee is confident these changes will make IAMOOT a more comprehensive experience for all our participants while providing a more enriching academic journey. It constitutes a celebration of the legacy of more than 4900 students and faculty participants from over 365 universities over the last 30 years that keeps growing.
- Teams will be assigned to prepare written and oral arguments in both roles: Victims and the State. Teams will remain composed of two speakers and one or two coaches.
- Teams will be required to prepare two legal memorandums: one for the Victims and one for States
- Memorandums will be shorter, with a smaller number of words. The memorials will continue to be assessed based on the same system of scores that has been used in the Competition.
- Each team will participate in at least two preliminary oral rounds. In one round, the team will perform as the Victim; in the other, it will perform as the State.
- For the preliminary rounds, Judges will deliberate directly after each round and decide which team has won the session and will make the announcement immediately after deliberation. No score system will be used to determine the winner of each confrontation.
- In the preliminary rounds, teams winning two rounds will automatically qualify for the semifinals. Teams that lose their two rounds will not advance to the semifinals. Teams that lose one round and win another may be advanced based on the average score of the two memorials submitted. Only a limited number of teams in this category will be selected to the semifinal.
- Individual speakers’ scores will remain awarded based on the criteria for points scores assigned by the judges in the rounds.
- Scores from the semifinal rounds will remain awarded based on points score criteria, in the same way it has been done in previous years. Only the best Victim and the best State will advance to the Final Round.
Rules and registration forms will be published in November. Stay tuned. Our 30th anniversary has begun.
The 2025 topic:
We are thrilled to announce that the topic for our 30th Anniversary Inter-American Moot Court Competition will be "Human Trafficking and Human Rights." We will work for a second consecutive year with Human Rights specialists and attorneys from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. You can learn more about the IACHR work here: https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/Default.asp
We have decided to collaborate with Jorge Meza Flores, the current Assistant Executive Secretary for the Petition and Case System at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), since May 1, 2022, to write the 2025 hypothetical case. Jorge has held various positions within the IACHR, including Coordinator of the Case Section and the Precautionary Measures Section, as well as specialist in case management for the former Court Group and the Rapporteurship on Human Rights Defenders. He has a Master of Legal Studies from Georgetown University with a Certification in Human Rights, and a law degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He has also taught public international law and human rights at UNAM’s Faculty of Law. His extensive professional experience and academic background have equipped him with a comprehensive understanding of the various mechanisms within the Inter-American Human Rights System. This remarkable collaboration between Jorge and the Moot Court Competition is part of a cooperation agreement between AUWCL and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, aimed at implementing the Inter-American system in all its forms and fostering shared projects.
To develop the hypothetical case for the 30th edition, Jorge Meza is joined by two Co-Authors: Marina de Almeida Rosa and Nydia María Juárez González. Marina, a Brazilian lawyer specializing in gender issues, currently serves as a consultant in Section of Cases III at the Executive Secretariat of Petitions, Cases, and Friendly Settlements of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. She is also pursuing an LLM in International Human Rights Law and Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law, where she actively contributes to the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. Marina holds a Master’s in Public Law from the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos, supported by a CAPES/PROEX scholarship from the Brazilian Ministry of Education, and a specialization in International Law from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Before her tenure at the Commission, she engaged extensively with issues related to human mobility in both academic and civil society.
Nydia María Juárez González is a Guatemalan lawyer specializing in human rights. Since 2020, she has served as a consultant and human rights specialist in the Rapporteurship on Human Mobility at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). In this role, Nydia has played a vital part in strategic monitoring and the development of inter-American standards for identifying and protecting victims of crimes in migratory contexts, including human trafficking, migration regularization, international protection, and the right to nationality while preventing statelessness.
Prior to her work at the IACHR, Nydia was an advisor at the Presidential Commission for the Coordination of Executive Policy in Human Rights Matters (COPREDEH) in Guatemala and served as a coordinating attorney at the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman. She has also provided expertise to various civil society organizations, focusing on the prosecution and punishment of human trafficking.The chosen theme is indeed highly relevant and deserves deeper reflection, especially as it sits at the intersection of urgent social justice issues and human rights advocacy. Human trafficking has escalated into a critical global problem, affecting millions and crossing borders with alarming ease. This dark reality not only strips individuals of their dignity and freedom but also poses significant challenges to societal integrity and security.
In addressing this issue, it is essential to safeguard human rights, which serve as the foundation for a more just society. Upholding these rights empowers individuals, builds community resilience and enables effective prevention and response strategies. By prioritizing human rights in the fight against trafficking, we not only protect vulnerable people, but also foster a culture of respect, accountability and empowerment. This inclusive approach is crucial to dismantling the systems that allow trafficking to flourish, ensuring that all people can live free from exploitation and fear. We also look forward to covering unexplored angles related to human trafficking. Working with attorneys at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is a real privilege because it means that the Competition will actually reflect what the best brains in the Inter-American System have thought about the applicable standards and how to advance their development.
We hope this topic will encourage participants to reflect on how our strategies and approaches to combat human trafficking can be strengthened while ensuring the protection of human rights. By fostering a healthy discussion on this critical issue, we aim to generate innovative ideas and legal solutions that address the complex challenges of trafficking within the Inter-American system.
#IAMOOT2025 #30ANNIVERSARY