Work experience is important for graduates–thus, Double Master’s students are required to serve an internship in their third year. The China-EU School of Law’s (CESL) student Huang Tingli aimed high–and got a position at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. CESL supported her with a return flight ticket.

Why did you want to intern at The Hague?

The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Court is the world’s first permanent international criminal court, participating in a global fight to end impunity and through international criminal justice, aims to hold those responsible accountable for their crimes and to help prevent these crimes from happening again.

I was assigned to Prosecution Division and was a team member in the Ongwen prosecution team. The case against Dominic Ongwen, a former militia leader and former child soldier from northern Uganda who is accused of over 70 war crimes including rape and murder, is the first-ever trial of a Lord's Resistance Army commander. Ongwen prosecution team is led by senior trial lawyer Benjamin Gumpert and consists of a group of lawyers and legal officers from different countries such as the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia. I was the only Chinese at ICC during my internship. That gave me the opportunity to learn more about other cultures and to promote Chinese culture.

The ICC was established in 2002, when the Rome Statute entered into force.

How did this internship train your legal skills?

The Ongwen trial opened in December 2016 so that during my internship in summer, I focused on the disclosure of evidential material, the preparation of the pretrial brief, the list of evidence and the review of victim applications.

In China, I was trained in civil law system. I was not very familiar with the disclosure process deriving from Common Law jurisdictions. But I quickly grasped the fundamental principles deriving from the adversarial nature of the proceedings. I also understood the burden on the prosecution to act fairly in assessing and marking for disclosure items which might be important to the defence, particularly where these are opposed to the prosecutors approach.

I focussed on sexual and gender-based crimes, nearly one third of the charges come under this heading, and the crime against humanity. I wrote a memo that formed the basis for the eventual wording of the pretrial brief.

Student Huang Tingli (second from left) with the official ICC certificate and fellow interns.

What else did you learn?

The prosecution team received over 2,000 victim applications for the Ongwen case. Victims who wish to participate and reparation are an essential part of the ICC’s mandate and my involvement in this aspect of trial preparation helped me to understand this aspect of ICC’s work. The short time as a member of the Ongwen prosecution team also provided me with the opportunity to experience the ‘hands on’ approach of international criminal law. In particular, coming from a country with an inquisitorial legal system, this internship has provided me with experience of how an adversarial legal system works. Additionally, this internship at an international tribunal gave me the opportunity to work in a multi-cultural environment and to experience the charm of cultural exchange.

Text and photos by Huang Tingli, Double Master’s student from the 2014 intake