News Archive

IU McKinney 2Ls Sam Sites and Peter Kern are currently in internships in Prague, Czech Republic as part of the law school’s Program in International Human Rights Law (PIHRL).

Sites and Kern (Sites is in the photo, which was taken in Prague) are currently serving at Organization for Aid to Refugees (OPU) in Prague. OPU is a non-governmental organization that focuses solely on refugee rights. The organization has a legal department and social workers with its headquarters in Prague and another office in Brno. OPU's goal is to help refugees gain some form of protection from the Czech Republic, whether it be asylum or the inferior subsidiary protection.

So far, the two have taken on assignments from the group’s lawyers seeking research on the current human rights conditions in a specific country. They’ve also conducted client interviews. Kern speaks Russian and interviewed a client from the Ukraine. Kern also interviewed a refugee who was born in Ghana, but has no citizenship. Sites has interviewed a client from Ethiopia who was imprisoned and tortured, and a citizen of Somalia who was fleeing Al-Shabab.

“After the interviews we'll corroborate the clients' stories and then compose a statement of the facts and possibly some more research on previous European Union rulings that favor our client along with the rulings that might hurt our clients' cases,” Sites said. “We've gained valuable experiences by traveling multiple times to the refugee center in Kostelec and the detention center in Bela-Jezova. We even were able to sit in on a criminal extradition case in a Czech court. This internship has everything a person could need: instructive and kind colleagues, valuable experiences, and legal work that makes a difference.”

Sites and Kern are two of eight IU McKinney J.D. and LL.M. students who are spending their summer in 12 different cities across the globe in PIHRL internships.