The VU team consisting of (left to right) Ana Luz Manzano Ortiz, Emma Waal, Indy Mooij and Paula Lozada has advanced to the oral rounds as their written pleadings belonged to the twelve highest scored submissions as decided by Members of the Evaluating Committee. The 2022 Migration Moot Court Competition had 40 teams signing up from 23 different countries. Its first edition was organised by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2019.
This edition of the competition is organised by Ghent University and consists of a written round and a two-day oral round taking place in Ghent, Belgium. Each team will plead a fictitious case between a State and a migrant before a judicial body. A particular and challenging characteristic of the International Migration and Refugee Law Moot Court Competition is that the case develops throughout the competition. Particular attention will also be paid to a debriefing of the case and feedback to the teams. During the oral hearing each team will plead twice (once for the State and once for the migrant). The initial case – as submitted for the written pleadings – will be the basis for the first rounds of the oral hearing. The best teams will compete with each other in the (semi)final(s), in which respectively a new element and an entire new migration law topic will be prepared and pleaded. Each court session takes 60 minutes, including pleadings, rebuttals and questions of the judges. Judges will be experts in the field of asylum and migration law, thanks to a collaboration with the International Association of Refugee and Migration Judges.
This year’s case concerns a national of the Syrian Arab Republic, who asks for international protection in the People’s Republic of Kalakuta, a fictitious country. The case is accessible here: https://www.ugent.be/re/epir/en/mootcourt/casemigrmoot.