My interest in international law can be traced back to my time as a child in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa. At a young age, I faced many of the devastating situations endured by my country at large. I experienced civil war and adverse cultural practices, including female genital mutilation. At the time, I had little to no understanding of the circumstances that forced my family to seek asylum in the United States. However, after I took a course in human rights with Professor Jacques Fomerand during my undergraduate years at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, I began to have an interest in international law and realize that the world we live in has a long way to go, as all people, not only in Côte d’Ivoire, face various cultural, political, and religious problems.

Preparing for the Jessup International Law Moot Court competition was like learning a new instrument to perform before a live audience in just six months. The competition required an enormous amount of time, patience, organization, teamwork, writing, reading, and on-the-spot thinking, but the moment the oral argument at the 2020 competition ended, I found myself desperate to stand up and perform five — no, ten, more times. Advocating for a country before an international tribunal requires the same critical thinking and reasoning as other areas of the law, but with the added challenge of fashioning an argument inside the unique language of international law, where nothing is set-in-stone and practice differs from paper.