The African Human Rights Moot Court Competition is one of the prestigious moot competitions conducted in Africa. It is an annual event organized and conducted by the Center of Human Rights, University of Pretoriafrom 03 – 08 October 2016, in partnership with Law Schools found in different African States.
The human rights moot court competition aims to advance the cause of human rights in Africa by providing an opportunity to law students from across the continent to prepare and argue a hypothetical case before human rights experts. The event is one of the largest gatherings of law students, human rights experts and judges across Africa. In addition to disseminating the substantive contents of human rights, it sensitizes the law students and other participants on the functioning of the human rights enforcement institution in Africa, African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, which served as a forum in the event. This year marked the 25th edition of the competition and the issues argued by students include: The legality of withdrawal from the African Court’s jurisdiction by African states; Conditions of detention; Freedom of association; and Gender and human rights of women.
The Competition was organized by the University of Pretoria (Center of Human Rights) in partnership with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights as well as the University of The Gambia (Faculty of Law). It was held from 03 – 08 October 2016 at the University of Pretoria. The 25th African Human Rights Moot Court Competition attracted law students from 54 universities cutting across Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone speaking African countries.
Haramaya University, College of Law, has been taking part in this competition for long. This year it was represented by fifth year regular law students namely Firew Kasaye Gidey and Nuru Beyene Asebo. As required by the organizers of the event, they prepared memorials for the applicant and the respondent, 4000 words each, under the supervision of Bacha Daba, a human rights lecturer in the College. The average score of our team for both memorials was 77%, ranked 7th out of 54 universities who took part in the competition. The winning memorial score was 83% (Moi University, Kenya).The memorial of the oral round winner team, University of Stellenbosch, was 75% – two points behind the Haramayan.
As our team was grouped with the Anglophone group, they competed with mooters who come from English speaking African States to show their advocacy skill and arguments to the judges. The score for the oral submission of our team was 73 which is better than the last year record. According to Mr Bacha, HU team was one of the surprise team in the event as they amazed the judges for their strong arguments and quality of oral submissions.
In addition to acquainting our students with advocacy skill, the participation of our College and students in such prestigious international event will have a supreme role in internationalizing the University in general and the College of Law in particular, meeting one of the vision of the University.
The team is very grateful to the Office of the President, Academic and Administration and Student Affairs Vice President Offices, College of law dean and staffs for their determined support and encouragement in the course of preparation and competition. Mr Bacha the coach of the team, also expressed their deepest gratitude to Mr Seid Mohammed, the owner of Ambassador suits factory, for sponsoring the team particularly by providing best quality ambassador suits for all members of the team that made us to shine in the event.
Haramayan, during oral presentation @University of Pretoria (3 Oct 2016).
Constitutional Court of South Africa, hosting the final round of oral competition (@ Johannesburg, on 08 Oct 2016)