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ICU Students Represent Asia-Pacific Region at Nelson Mandela World Human Rights Moot Court Competition at U.N. Headquarters in Geneva

Update: October 23, 2017

Commemorative photo in front of the U.N. Geneva Headquarters From left to right: Assistant Professor Hiromichi Matsuda, Ryo Usukubo, Momo Nakakita, Toshiki Narushima, Chizuru YamazakiCommemorative photo in front of the U.N. Geneva Headquarters From left to right: Assistant Professor Hiromichi Matsuda, Ryo Usukubo, Momo Nakakita, Toshiki Narushima, Chizuru Yamazaki

An ICU team led by Assistant Professor Hiromichi Matsuda (Major: Law) took part in the 9th Nelson Mandela World Human Rights Moot Court Competition held at the U.N. headquarters in Geneva between July 17, and July 21.

The competition was organized by the Centre for Human Rights based at the University of Pretoria (Republic of South Africa) with the support of the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Undergraduate students and master's degree law majors from around the world participated in the competition and the teams that won regional preliminaries were invited to take part in the pre-final and final rounds. In the Asia-Pacific region, 13 university teams got through the preliminaries, including those from the University of Tokyo and ICU from Japan.

The ICU team consisted of four members from the College of Liberal Arts: Chizuru Yamazaki (fourth-year student), Momo Nakakita (second-year student), Toshiki Narushima (third-year student) and Ryo Usukubo (second-year student). They presented their arguments on a hypothetical human rights violation case before a panel of human rights experts serving as judges. The team bowed out in a pre-final round but with their participation in the competition, the students had a chance to visit Paris as part of the Student Ambassador Programme* of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). They also visited the official residence of the OECD ambassador and OECD offices in connection, which all served as a very good experience for the students.

*A program for selected student teams to conduct PR campaigns concerning OECD's research and policy proposal activities.

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Commemorative photo with former Justice Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court of South Africa who served as a judge in the competition.

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