NEWS

2017 International Humanitarian Law Moot Court Competition is Won by ICU Student

Update: December 6, 2017

The team led by Chizuru Yamazaki (4th year student) won the 2017 International Humanitarian Law Moot Court Competition (Hosted by the International Committee of the Red Cross Tokyo Mission. The language used was English.), which was held at Waseda University on December 2 (Sat.) and December 3 (Sun.).

In the competition, held every year since 2010, the participating teams are given various cases to argue related to something that happened in an armed conflict, with each team being assigned to take either the prosecution side or the defense side. Participating in this year's competition in addition to ICU were Aichi Prefectural University, Kyoto University, the University of Tokyo, Doshisha University, Hitotsubashi University, Yokohama City University, and Waseda University. For this competition, Ms. Yamazaki teamed up with students from the University of Tokyo.

Comment by Chizuru Yamazaki:：

Going about day-to-day life in a privileged environment in Japan, I sometimes find myself almost forgetting that there are people who live in environments that are not peaceful. I gained a great deal by participating in the International Humanitarian Law Moot Court Competition, hosted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Tokyo Mission, this year. The first thing was being able to experience real-life law in action. Next, I was able to gain access to many judicial precedents and I learned that there are so many people who have been victims of war crimes, and I was again made very much aware that relief and aid approaches are being made from various sectors including the ICRC, as well as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to resolve these situations.

Furthermore, in the preparation stages for this moot court competition, we were given an opportunity to have discussions with Shinya Murase, an ICU alumnus (1967 graduate) who is currently active at the front lines in this field and is a member of the International Law Commission; Sunkyung Choi, a Canadian lawyer; and Zhu Wenqi, a professor at Renmin University of China Law School. It was a very stimulating experience as well as a tremendous honor.

As a student enrolled at ICU, a university founded on a philosophy of peace, I truly felt that because I was able to learn so much about peace, the experiences I had over the past three months, including the time I spent on preparations for this competition, were very valuable and precious. Although there were times that were really difficult, I was able to thoroughly enjoy taking part in the competition. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude once again to all the people who were involved. Thank you very much.