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René Cassin competition creating a European legal culture says Nadiejda Nikitina, president of the student organising committee

Since its introduction in 1985, the René Cassin European Human Rights Competition - supported by the Council of Europe - has become the most important legal competition in the French-speaking world. Nadiejda Nikitina, president of the competition's student organising committee, also thinks that it has helped to spread human rights teaching throughout the academic world.

Interview 29.03.2005

Question: Nadiejda Nikitina, you are Ukrainian and a student at Strasbourg's Robert Schuman university, where you are preparing a thesis on European Union law. Since 2004 you have also been President of Juris Ludi, the association that has organised the René Cassin European Human Rights Competition for the last twenty years. Looking back, how would you judge your competition?

Nadiejda Nikitina: I joined the team of students that runs the Juris Ludi association just two years ago but I have been familiar with the competition since I arrived in Strasbourg three or four years earlier. I believe that the Cassin Competition's great strength is to make human rights something practical and tangible for students. By studying the case put in front of them they realise that human rights is not just a university option but a living reality, and that the European Convention on Human Rights is not just a fine document whose anniversary we celebrate but a tool that everyone can use. This is clearly highlighted by the fictional cases presented to participants. This year it is the rights of persons facing police questioning and psychiatric detention, last year reality TV and so on.

Question: Since its inception, the competition has been hosted by the Council of Europe and the final is held in the court room of the European Court of Human Rights. What is the relationship between Juris Ludi and the Council of Europe?

Nadiejda Nikitina:, Juris Ludi is an independent student association linked to the Council of Europe, which is our main source of moral support. Its backing helps to give our competition wide publicity and it offers us enormous assistance. We benefit from the time and effort of lawyers from the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights and many others from the Council of Europe, who are very present and active in our technical advisory committee. As such they contribute greatly to the competition's legal quality and its reputation. Thanks to the Council of Europe, the Cassin Competition is the best known and most highly regarded French language legal competition in the world. This is shown by its growing success, not just in Europe but also beyond, since we regularly receive university teams from the United States, Canada and Latin America, attracted by the quality of the cases we examine, the legal problems they raise and the opportunities to explore the European Convention on Human Rights.

Question: What do students gain from taking part in or winning the competition?

Nadiejda Nikitina: Firstly, the very fact of participating helps to create a shared European legal culture. Everyone arrives with his or her distinctive national legal culture and discovers that before the European Convention on Human Rights and its case-law everyone is equal. This also helps to spread human rights teaching in the different university systems. Since it was established, several countries have made participation in the competition part of their teaching curriculum. This is the case, for example, in Germany and Spain.