Students from Stanford Law School’s International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic recently served as official observers at COP16 in Cali, Colombia. Their experience is helping to bolster their clinic work with the Colombian human rights organization Dejusticia—and provided a front-row seat to the world’s highest-profile environmental negotiations.

Jasmine Betancourt, Victoria Osanyinpeju, and Nissim Roffe Piket (all JD ’26), along with clinical supervising attorney Shaw Drake, had access to COP16’s Blue Zone, where country representatives spent two weeks in small groups and plenary sessions working to stem the tide of global biodiversity degradation. The approximately 180 participating nations at what is formally known as the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity had a formidable mandate: to turn the commitments of the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework into concrete actions. The observer opportunity was facilitated by the clinic’s longtime partnership with Dejusticia, with which the clinic has worked on projects on behalf of migrants, among other human rights initiatives. “The opportunity to attend gave students firsthand insights into this global legal process and helped further our work with Dejusticia to bring a rights-based perspective to biodiversity debates,” says Drake. SL