My Human Rights Law Internship

2012-02-23 08:43 AMCareer Envy

Jack Denton, Co-founder and Director of AllAboutCareers, is our very own human rights law enthusiast. Before he started AllAboutLaw.co.uk with Paul Harris, he did an internship at the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Special War Crimes department. Here Jack tells us about the best six months of his life…

Zdrȁvo!

I moved to Sarajevo, Bosnia in January 2009 after spending four years at the University of Essex, where I studied law and human rights. I’d always enjoyed the human rights aspect of my course, but my inspiration really came from the dissertation I did in my final year.

I looked at how the state of Chile had changed since the transition to democracy following authoritarian rule. I investigated how this had changed human rights protection for the people of Chile, with specific reference to torture, disappearances, and inhumane and degrading treatment.

Through a chance encounter, I met the uncle of a friend that I’d played rugby with. He had been tortured during this period, and it really inspired me to get more involved in a subject that I already found so fascinating.

Originally, I’d planned on going to law school after my final year, but I decided that working in a law firm wasn’t for me. I had spent more than six months doing work experience with various firms, and I wasn’t really excited about the prospect of doing that for the next 40 years.

I started applying for everything I could find relating to human rights or international development. Since I didn’t speak any other languages, I decided that working for the EU or the UN would be out of the question. Plus, I didn’t have a master’s degree or any relevant work experience. Consequently, I realised that I’d be better off going somewhere that: A) not many people wanted to go to, and B) had a language that not many people knew, in which case there wouldn’t be a language requirement other than English.

Eventually, I got two internship offers. Both of them, incidentally, were in Bosnia & Herzegovina: one at the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and one for the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Special War Crimes department. I jumped at the chance to work for the Prosecutor’s Office and booked my tickets to Sarajevo. It’s probably worth mentioning that I probably sent off 30 or more speculative applications before I got anywhere.

I worked in one of six international teams who were tasked with prosecuting war criminals from the war in the former Yugoslavia. Our aim was to build a case, so we could indict (arrest) individuals accused of war crimes (e.g. murder, torture, rape and forced removal) and then prosecute them. My job mostly involved reading witness statements, conducting interviews and doing legal research into points of international human rights law. The objective was to fit the facts we could prove with the law and the precedents that had been set.

It was an amazing experience to live in a new country and learn a crazy new language. It remains the best six months of my life. There weren’t any times when I didn’t want to be there; although, some of the things I saw and heard did stick in my mind.

I had two particular interviews, one with a rape victim and one with a torture victim, which played on my mind for some time. You soon learn to deal with it though, and you can always talk to the people around you who have been through it before.

I would have loved to have carried on. I could have stayed for another six months, but then a friend of mine was starting a law careers website called AllAboutLaw.co.uk and it sounded like it would be fun to run my own company (and potentially become rich one day). Here I am three years later. I’m not sure being a ravenous capitalist and a human rights enthusiast always go hand-in-hand, but hopefully I’ll be able to reconcile these two interests and find a happy medium later in my career.