ICC judge Kimberly Prost and the winning Russian team from Far Eastern Federal University. ©ICC-CPI
The Far Eastern Federal University (Vladivostok, Russia) won the International Criminal Court (ICC) Moot Court Competition, Russian version, held in Courtroom I of the ICC premises in The Hague (the Netherlands) late May.
The Saint-Petersburg State University and the National Research University Higher School of Economics – Nizhnii Novgorod won, respectively, second and third places. The “Best Speaker” award went to Marina Petrova from Saint-Petersburg State University
Members of the winning team are Bolshakova Anastasiia, Danshov Vadim, Eremeeva Polina, Maltsev Alexander, and Romanov Ilya. On the judge’s bench for this competition were ICCjudge Kimberly Prost, presiding, Special Tribunal for Lebanon President judge Ivana Hrdličková and ICC Legal Officer Matt Halling.
This version of the ICC Moot Court Competition is organised by the Law Faculty of National Research University Higher School of Economics with institutional support from the ICC. 13 teams and more than 70 students representing two countries (Russia (12) and Belarus (1)) took part in the preliminary rounds of the competition under the supervision of university professors, scholars, legal practitioners, and former competitors, including former ICC Judge Anita Ušacka.
The organisational and financial support for the competition was provided by Kuznetsova’s Center for International Criminal Law and Comparative Criminal Law Studies (Faculty of Law, Lomonosov Moscow State University), the Russian National Group of International Association of Penal Law, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Russian Federation, the International Committee of the Red Cross (Regional Delegation in Moscow), the legal firms ‘FBK Legal’, ‘ZKS’, ‘Feoktistov and partners,’ and ‘Knyazev and partners’. The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Russian Federation and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Netherlands also supported the competition and the winning teams in their trip to The Hague and organized the visits to international institutions seating in the Hague (the International Court of Justice and the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, in particular) as well as a roundtable with non-governmental organisations.
In the context of its Academic Programme, the ICC supports the organisation of ICC Moot Court Competitions in Chinese, English, Russian and Spanish, with a view to also support Arabic and French versions in the future. These initiatives play a critical role in galvanising interest in the Court’s work with academic communities as well as in enhancing promotion and respect for international criminal law.
