Congratulations to the Lao team participating in the Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Moot Court, which was again this year exceptionally organized through a virtual format due to covid-19, from 9-13th March,2022. The University of Luxembourg has been actively supporting NUoL’s participation in this international competition! Dr. Perrine Simon, the Liaison Officer of Uni.lu, has been coaching the team during from the January to March and hosted the team during the competition at the Project’s office at the Faculty of Law and Political Science.
The Lao team has been trained intensively after winning the National Round in December 2021 until the last day of the competition. They worked extremely hard and put a lot of effort into this highly competitive moot court on International Criminal Law, entirely in English, to challenge universities from the Asia-Pacific region.
After five days of competition, with a total of 24 teams of law students across the Asia-Pacific, Singapore Management University (Yong Pung How School of Law) won the competition. The first runner-up was awarded to University Gadjah Mada (Faculty of Law), Dylan Jesse Andrian from Universitas Gadjah Mada won the Best Mooter. The best prosecution memorial was awarded to the University of Hong Kong and the best defense memorial went to the Chinese university in Hong Kong and Chulalongkorn University. The Quarter-Finalist teams were: Interantional Isalamic University Malaysia, Singapore Management University, the University of Hongkong, the University of Tokyo, the University of New South Wales, the University Gadjah Mada, the University of San Agustin and Victoria University of Wellington. For more details on the 20th IHL Moot Court competition results and announcement, you can find the link here: https://www.redcross.org.hk/en/moot20/results.html.
Laos did not make it to the top eight teams but the team got very positive feedback from the judges during the oral pleading of the general rounds! They also managed a good scoring in the written memorials with an average of good-good+.
This Moot court organised by the ICRC is a great way to stimulate legal thinking, by learning how to develop legal arguments appropriately. Students also have improved their critical thinking and problem solving skills, analyzing skill, presentation skills, debating skills and also their English!