Marianne Meiorg

LLM Human Rights Law

Estonia

Class of 2005/06

Prior to coming to Nottingham, I was working in a law office as an assistant to lawyer.

I wanted to study international human rights law and the programme that Nottingham offered was the strongest. It included lecturers that are highly respected as international human rights experts by the international community. They were actually writing the textbooks that students are required to read then and now in other law schools as well.

Because the course brought together people from all over the world, it gave me a perspective of the world and people in it, which I would never have received studying in my own country. The lecturers being practitioners themselves (members of international organisations etc) gave a rare insight into the complicated world of international human rights. 

I am a head of the Estonian Human Rights Centre, which was created recently by like-minded people to fill the gap in human rights protection in Estonia. The course gave me an international perspective to human rights situation in a specific country. I will no longer merely look at the internal regulation of Estonia but see that in parallel with international law and obligations that Estonia has agreed to. I know what the tools of international law are and how to use them, which is not what I would have learnt studying in Estonia.