University of Virginia School of Law student Lillie Stephens ’25 worked in San José, Costa Rica, this summer as a Monroe Leigh Fellow in International Law. She writes here of her trip in an occasional series, Postcards from Abroad, featuring reports from students on international travel studies.
When you mention Costa Rica in the United States, the images that pop up are often of ziplining through the rainforest canopy, surfing or the “pura vida” attitude we’ve heard about through tourism. But thanks to the presence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a strong civil society sector, Costa Rica’s capital, San José, is also one of the human rights centers of the Western Hemisphere. With the support of the Monroe Leigh Fellowship, I had the opportunity to spend my summer interning at one of the preeminent human rights organizations in the Americas, the Center for Justice and International Law.
CEJIL is an international human rights organization that advocates for justice, liberty and dignity for the inhabitants of all countries in the Western hemisphere. They use strategic litigation and a variety of advocacy tools to defend women, indigenous groups and human rights defenders, among others. Today, CEJIL carries the largest case load of any organization before the Inter-American Human Rights System, and they have litigated some of the landmark cases in the system. The San José office, where I interned, covers cases and issues in Central America and Mexico.
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