Maximus Posada as Presiding. Courtesy photo
Luke Favorite as Defense Attorney. Courtesy photo
BY ENRIQUE POSADA
Los Alamos High School seniors Maximus Posada and Luke Favorite were two out of eight students selected to represent the United States this November at the 2023 Model International Criminal Court (MICC) in Krzyzowa, Poland. This 11-day program is sponsored by New Mexico Human Rights Projects which has been providing this life-changing opportunity to high school students since 2013. This 10-year anniversary was special as the US cohort of eight students also traveled to the Netherlands where they were treated to a private lecture and tour of the Anne Frank House and Museum in Amsterdam.
The students then traveled to Berlin, Germany and visited the Holocaust Memorial and Brandenburg Gate before arriving at the International Youth Center in Krzyzowa, Poland to begin their MICC experience. The US delegation met and collaborated with students from Germany and Poland as they simulated International Criminal Court trials from preparation to trials to verdicts. Bringing in students from around the globe, MICC fosters intercultural dialogue and understanding among students of various national and social backgrounds.
Selected students took on the roles of judges, prosecutors, defenders, and observing journalists in 3 historical war crime cases – The Nuremberg Tribunals, the Rwandan Tribunal, and the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Luke Favorite served on the Rwanda Tribunal Defense team for Simon Bikindi, a Hutu musician who assisted in extremist propaganda during the genocide. “It was extremely interesting to navigate morality and law to defend someone that I wouldn’t ordinarily defend, and I learned a lot in the process,” Favorite said.
Maximus Posada served as Presiding Judge for the Nuremberg mock trial of Frederick Flick, a Nazi-era industrialist. “The MICC emphasized the importance of learning about past atrocities in order to prevent them in the future. Through this, I learned that the best way to find solutions to conflict is to have open dialogue with others who have differing perspectives,” Posada said.