So I am finishing my second week of my new internship at CEJIL, and I´m not sure what to think. The description of the internship on their website sounded perfect:

Legal interns are paired with a CEJIL staff attorney and are actively involved in three areas of work: the Legal Defense Program, the Training and Dissemination Program, and the Campaign to Strengthen the Inter-American System Interns will collaborate with his/her tutor in the work on cases before the Commission and the Inter-American Court. This could include researching the case background and precedents, helping to draft and edit briefs, attending hearings, developing legal arguments, and communicating with client NGOs.

So far I have been given two projects, one which involved reading and writing summaries of court decisions, and one final review of a translated report. I haven´t really talked to to any of the lawyers about the specific work they do, and from what I hear from the other interns who´ve been here longer, that doesn´t ever happen.

While I am totally thrilled just to have some official place to come from 10 to 6 to give structure to my day, it´s starting to feel similar to what happened at the other NGOs - that I am here not doing very much, and that they see coming up with projects for me to work on as more of a chore than it´s worth. At lunch yesterday the director was looking at one of the evaluations a previous intern left, and said one of the most common complaints from the interns was that they didn´t get to interact much with the attorneys or be involved in the cases. She wasn´t sure what to do, she said, because she doesn´t have time to constantly be explaining her job to new interns, and can´t guarantee that each intern will be here right when there is a court date.

I do understand that managing and training interns is a lot of work - I had to do a lot of that during my time at NIJC. But if you are well-organized ahead of time, they are a great resource to utilize - three months of free labor by the best and the brightest law students from around the world. From the description on the internet it seems like that is understood by the CEJIL in general, but in this office it´s as if they haven´t even read it.

I´m considering suggesting to the director that I can help her organize the interns here, since I´ve done it before, or even just help to implement the program they already have. It would be harder than at NIJC, since I don´t know the organization that well, but if their problem really is that they don´t have the time, I have all the time in the world for the next six months here.

We´ll see what happens - from my experiences at the MEDH, the CAREF, and now here, I´ve learned that the concept of using volunteer labor here is totally different than in the US, in spite of the fact that the NGOs seem equally overworked. If the CEJIL doesn´t want to keep me, I´ll have to find something to do for the next six months. I´m considering just doing as much travelling as possible while I have the time - I´m tired of knocking on doors of NGOs only to have them tell me they don´t have anything for me to do. I hear Brazil is nice..