Legal intern (paid) – MENA Rights Group

Deadline: 2 June 2024

Starting date: August/September 2024

Location: Geneva

About MENA Rights Group:

MENA Rights Group is a Geneva-based legal advocacy NGO, focusing on the protection and promotion of fundamental rights and freedoms in the Middle East and North Africa. Adopting a holistic approach, we work at both the individual and structural level. We provide legal counselling to victims of human rights violations through recourse to international law mechanisms. In addition, we assess the human rights situation on the ground and bring key issues to the attention of relevant stakeholders to call for legal and policy reform. We are a small and dynamic group of human rights practitioners sharing a passion for the MENA region.

About the internship:

Key tasks will include assisting our team with documentation and case work, preparing communications to file with international protection mechanisms, contributing to the drafting of reports and legal briefs, and supporting other type of advocacy and communication actions undertaken by MENA Rights Group.

Interns are fully integrated into the team, and we ensure they work on a diversity of issues and cases. We provide guidance throughout the internship and interns are supervised by one or more experienced staff.

The internship is for a duration of six months (with a trial period of one month), starting in August/September 2024. We provide our interns with a monthly stipend of CHF 800 (gross).

This is normally a full-time position, based in Geneva. We implement the 4-day workweek, Monday through Thursday.

Mandatory requirements:

If you want to join our team, you must:

• Be a Swiss/EU citizen or hold a valid work permit for Switzerland;

• NB: Candidates with a Swiss Student B Permit can only work full-time when they do not have classes.
• Be enrolled in university during the internship, and be able to enter a three-way agreement between you, MENA Rights Group, and your university.
• The internship must be intra-cursus, i.e., part of an academic training program, a professional training program or a socio-professional integration program, and must meet the conditions set by the Conseil de surveillance du marché de l’emploi (CSME).

Kindly ensure that you meet these before applying. We will automatically reject applications which do not meet these criteria established by the Canton of Geneva.

What we are looking for:

• Have demonstrated interest and knowledge of the MENA region;
• Have a background in law (international law, human rights law) or social sciences with a strong international law component;
• Be passionate about human rights;
• Speak and write English fluently; working knowledge of French or Arabic being additional assets;
• Have solid analytical and writing skills;
• Have great attention to detail;
• Be able to work in a fast-paced environment, i.e., be organised and able to work effectively and independently;
• Ideally, be familiar with social media;
• Share our values and vision;
• Enjoy working in a small and multicultural team.

What you need to do to apply:

Send an email to jobs@menarights.org with the subject line “Legal Internship – YOUR NAME”.

The application should be in English and contain, in PDF documents:

• A curriculum vitae;
• A motivation letter in the form of an essay (2 pages maximum) explaining your motivation for working with MENA Rights Group and how would you would like to contribute to MRG's work. We read these letters with great attention.
• In your email, please specify your earliest starting date and whether you are able to work full time (e., 32 hours per week).

If you wish, you can add a maximum of two supporting documents, such as writing samples.

The deadline is 2 June 2024. All applications are treated in confidentiality.

We will review applications in the weeks after the closing of the deadline. We will inform all candidates of whether their application has been shortlisted or rejected.