This summer, two participants in the Mekong Legal Network (MLN) [2] will travel to Washington, DC to attend the Summer Program in Environmental Law [3] at American University’s Washington College of Law (WCL). The lawyers are Nitaya Wangpaiboon, who defends human rights in Chiang Mai, and Jingjing Zhang, a top environmental lawyer in China. With help from WCL's Prof. David Hunter, the Director of the Summer Program, MLN has secured scholarships for their course of study.

The WCL Summer Program in Environmental Law focuses on important, timely international issues such as Climate Change Litigation, International Business and the Environment, Environmental Compliance & Enforcement, and International Law of Biodiversity. In addition, the Mekong lawyers will spend a week in ERI’s Washington office, learning about U.S. and International NGO operations and meeting with ERI’s allies. They will finish their US Summer Tour with one week of legal English training at WCL’s Summer Legal English Institute, and will enjoy the 4th of July in the U.S. Capital.

In addition, MLN is helping our Lao colleague, Manolinh Thepkhamvong, gain a scholarship to join WCL’s Master of Law program in International Environmental Law. Manolinh is the only known public interest lawyer of the 100 lawyers in the Lao Bar Association, and earning an LLM would provide a significant boost to public interest and environmental law -- and the promotion of the rule of law -- in the Lao PDR.