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2026 Inter-American Human Rights Moot Court Competition

Celebrating 31 Years!

2026 TOPIC

The Right to Protest under International Human Rights Law Legal Protection and Challenges Ahead

May 17th - 22nd, 2026

About the Competition

The Competition is a unique trilingual (English, Portuguese, and Spanish) event established to train law students on how to use the Inter-American human rights legal system as a legitimate forum for redressing human rights violations. Since its inception in 1995, it has trained over 5000 students and faculty participants from over 370 universities from the Americas and beyond. Written on a cutting-edge topic currently debated within the Inter-American system, the hypothetical case operates as the basis of the competition, and students argue the merits of this case by writing legal memoranda and preparing oral arguments for presentation in front of human rights experts acting as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

ENGLISH IAMOOT 2026 FINAL

About 2026 registration: 


Registration for the 2026 #IAMOOT will be open soon. Please be advised that in order to complete your registration, you must have a Google Account. When the Google Forms are open, keep in mind that you will have to click on the upper right button on this screen menu to access the registration forms. The button says: "Registration and other forms". You are required to be logged into your Google Account to provide all the requested information successfully. Furthermore, be advised that besides IAMOOT regular Google Forms, you will be required to fill out mandatory American University forms if you are paying via Credit Card. All relevant links are available on the right side of this menu. If any problem or question arises during your registration process, don't hesitate to get in touch with us at iamoot@wcl.american.edu 

Please kindly note that most of the links below, “Registration will be open soon,” remain inactive. Bear with us. IAMOOT 2026 Registration will be open by December 2025. 

31st Anniversary - Rule Changes 


The Inter-American Moot Court Competition Technical Committee has decided to slightly refine the rule changes implemented in our 30th anniversary given the success and popularity from our outstanding 2025 experience. These changes are based, among others, on the feedback from the teams, coaches, and judges. The Technical Committee is confident these changes will make IAMOOT a more comprehensive experience for all our participants while providing a more enriching academic journey. It constitutes a celebration of the legacy of more than 5000 students and faculty participants from over 370 universities over the last 30 years that keeps growing.

  1. Teams will be assigned to prepare written and oral arguments in both roles: Victims and the State. Teams will remain composed of two speakers and one or two coaches.
  2. Teams will be required to prepare two legal memorandums: one for the Victims and one for States
  3. Memorandums will be 10,000-12,000 words each. The memorials will continue to be assessed based on the same system of scores that has been used in the Competition. Check the 2026 Rules for information regarding format, structure, and Researchers.
  4. Each team will participate in only two preliminary oral rounds. In one round, the team will perform as the Victim; in the other, it will perform as the State.
  5. For the preliminary rounds, judges will deliberate immediately after each round and decide which team has won the session. No scoring system will be used to determine the winner of each confrontation. However, only the winner of the first preliminary round in which each team participates will be disclosed. This means that the winners of the second preliminary round will remain undisclosed until the announcement of the teams advancing to the semifinal.
  6. In the preliminary rounds, teams winning two rounds will automatically qualify for the semifinals. Teams that lose their two rounds will not advance to the semifinals. Teams that lose one round and win another may advance based on the average score of the two memorials submitted. Only a limited number of teams in this category will be selected for the semifinal.
  7. Individual speakers’ scores will remain awarded based on the criteria for points scores assigned by the judges in the rounds.
  8. Scores from the semifinal rounds will remain awarded based on points score criteria, in the same way it has been done in previous years. Only the best Victim and the best State will advance to the Final Round.

Rules and registration forms will be published in December  2026 Stay tuned. Our 31st anniversary has begun.

The 2026 Hypo Case Authors 

We are thrilled to announce that the topic for our 31st Edition Inter-American Moot Court Competition will be "The Right to Protest Under International Human Rights Law: Legal Protection and Challenges Ahead." We will be work the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization this year for the topic. You can find more information about the organization here: https://rfkhumanrights.org/.

For IAMOOT 2026, we are honored to be collaborating with Angelita Baeyens, Vice President of International Advocacy and Litigation of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. Baeyens leads high-impact cases before regional human rights mechanisms and the United Nations, focusing on emblematic cases related to civic space, discrimination, and gender-based violence. She has also led key actions to advance accountability through individual sanctions regimes, legal reforms, and advocacy before governments and international bodies concerning Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Previously, she worked as a Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations, where she monitored political developments in the Americas, and as a Human Rights Officer at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, where she coordinated the Rapporteurship on human rights defenders, among other responsibilities. Besides her distinguished professional career, Baeyens has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center since 2012. She holds a master’s degree in law from the University of Notre Dame and a law degree from the University of Ibagué.

To develop the 31th edition hypothetical case, Angelita will be joined by two more Co-Authors: Sofia Jaramillo Otoya and Leandro Léo Rebelo. Jaramillo is the current Executive Director of the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) in Colombia. Jaramillo is a lawyer from Universidad del Rosario and holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from Columbia University, with experience in the defense of civic space and freedom of expression in Latin America and Africa. She has worked with the Special Rapporteurships for Freedom of Expression of both the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the United Nations. She has been part of organizations such as RFK Human Rights, Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, the University of California, and Dejusticia. 

Leandro is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Human Rights, Democracy, and International Order at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He holds a law degree from Fundação Getúlio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro and is a researcher at its Center for Technology and Society. He is a former participant in the Inter-American Human Rights Moot Court Competition and coached the winning team in 2023. He also won the 2024 Human Rights Essay Award. Leandro has interned at RFK Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). At IAMOOT, we always seek to involve former participants to bring that unique "Moot" style that only someone who has experienced the competition firsthand can contribute.

The 2026 Topic 

The right to protest sits at the heart of democratic societies, yet it is increasingly threatened by restrictive legislation, excessive use of force, digital surveillance, criminalization of dissent, and shrinking civic space. The 2026 IAMOOT hypothetical seeks to confront these realities head-on. With recent massive civic movements in Nepal, Madagascar, Mexico, and many other places, the conversation about legitimate restrictions on the right of peaceful association comes again to the forefront of importance. Furthermore, the uniform and equal protection of the right to protest by different class members remains a question where many states do not guarantee that all people—regardless of their race, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, etc.—are able to exercise the right in the same conditions of protection. These issues remain unclear under current jurisprudential developments. The space for prospective solutions and fresh legal analysis is there; we only need committed students willing to do the work.

Looking Ahead to IAMOOT 2026 and what it has to offer;

Looking ahead to IAMOOT 2026, the Competition will present a hypothetical that deepens students’ understanding of the right to protest, including state obligations during demonstrations, permissible limitations, protections for journalists and defenders, digital freedoms, and accountability for abuses. By engaging with evolving standards across the Inter-American and universal systems, students will once again deliver rigorous and creative advocacy that reflects the cutting edge of human rights law.

Few exciting surprises are worth to mention:

  • First Place – IAMOOT Winners – Award: Internship at the InterAmerican Court on Human Rights (San Jose, Costa Rica)
  • Second Place – IAMOOT Runner Up Award: Internship at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Washington D.C.)
  • Best Speaker Overall – Internship with at RFK Human Rights (Washington D.C.)

We look forward again to a special IAMOOT 2026 experience. This will be our 31st anniversary. Working with prominent non-profits such as RFK Human Rights upholds the historic mission of this program to promote human rights education with attainable and realistic objectives, making sure that the Inter-American System is not a remote institution inaccessible to common and regular students, but a space for debate and innovation where everybody feels welcome.

#IAMOOT2026 #31ANNIVERSARY