TSU’s success: the Second Best European Team at the All-European Moot Court Competition

4 December, 2018

Team from Tbilisi State University became runner-up of the All-European International Humanitarian Law and Refugee Law Moot Court Competition. The team of International Law students Ana Tskipurishvili, Iva Vasadze and Tamar Chkhitunidze, coached by Dr. Saba Pipia, TSU International Law Institute lecturer, successfully participated in three preliminary rounds as well as pleaded in quarter-final and semi-final (two pleadings) and consequently qualified as finalist team. International round of the competition was hosted by the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) on November 20-25, 2018 and co-organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross, Office of the UN High Commissioner of Refugees, Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia and the University of Ljubljana.

The team had to plead before the competent international jury on the actual and novel topics of international humanitarian law and refugee law, such as: legality of autonomous weapon systems, cyber attack and conduct of hostilities, forcible displacement, relocation schemes for refugees, principle of non-refoulment, war crimes and etc.

The TSU team was prepared under the supervision of professors and researchers of the International Law Institute. As Professor Levan Alexidze in his capacity of Director of International Law Institute established the wider framework of this direction of TSU’s internationalization, Prof. Dr. Ketevan Khutsishvili, whose name is associated with introduction of refugee law and international criminal law courses as separate disciplines in TSU curricula, and PhD student of the Institute – Onisime Tskhomelidze also supported the team preparations.

The All European International Humanitarian Law and Refugee Law Moot Court Competition was held for the third time this year. Totally 18 law schools from the universities of Vienna, Budapest, Istanbul, Warsaw and other European universities took part in the competition. In the final round, TSU team competed versus Comnenius University of Bratislava, which won the competition.

This year’s edition of the moot court was preceded by the round table discussions with participation of professors of international humanitarian law and refugee law from the central and south-east Europe. Participants of the meeting shared their experience in teaching these subjects and also discussed challenges in this regard. TSU was represented at the professors' roundtable and the subsequent conference devoted to the topics of the moot court competition by Prof. Dr. Ketevan Khutsishvili and Dr. Saba Pipia.