The success of the team from Tbilisi State University in the  4th All-European International Humanitarian and Refugee Law Moot Court Competition was dedicated to Academician Levan Alexidze, as the team ended the Competition as the second best, along with  Ioseb Edisherashvili receiving the Best Oralist's Award.

The team was selected back in summer 2019 by late Professor Levan Alexidze, the founder of International Law school in Georgia and Prof.Dr. Ketevan Khutsishvili. The group unified International Law postgraduate students: Tamar Ruseishvili, Ioseb Edisherashvili and Ana Tabagari, having been coached by Revaz Tkemaladze (LLM, International Law). The team’s successful preparation was supervised by Professor Ketevan Khutsishvili, with the assistance of Dr. Sapa Pipia, Dr. Natia Kalandarishvili-Müller and PhD student Onisime Tskhomelidze.   

The international competition was hosted by the University of Ljubljana in partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Semi-final and final rounds of the competition were conducted as a mock hearing on jurisdictional issues at the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court.  Teams were evaluated by qualified professionals in different fields of International Law, including the former Judge of the ICC Mauro Politi, representative of the ICRC – Cedric Cotter, and others. The competition addressed pertinent issues of international legal issues, such as the legality of the environmental damage inflicted during warfare, cyber-attacks, forced displacement of population, exclusion from the refugee status for the commission of international crimes, management of the mass influx of asylum-seekers and voluntary repatriation in the country of origin.

The Moot Court Competition was held in the margins of the International Humanitarian Law week, within which Professor Ketevan Khutsishvili spoke at the international thematic conference dedicated to “ Displacement in times of armed conflict: How international humanitarian law protects in war, and why it matters”. Her presentation addressed the issues of interplay between International Humanitarian Law, Human Rights and Refugee Law in the context of regulation of forced displacement.  Professor Ketevan Khutsishvili also participated in the regional workshop of professors dedicated to the teaching of international criminal, humanitarian, migration and refugee law and presented information on a variety of teaching subjects and research practices in these legal fields in Georgia, for which Professor Levan Alexidze paved the way.

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