Strathmore Law School competed in the 8^th Nelson Mandela World Human Rights Competition in Geneva, Switzerland, winning the Best Memorials (written submissions) and Third-Best Oral Submissions categories. The competition took place from 18^th July 2016 to 20^th July 2016.

 

The competition had two stages: The Memorial-Writing stage – whereby any interested university from any country in the world drafted written submissions for both Applicant and Respondent based on a hypothetical case that the organisers released. The organisers ranked the memorials blindly, selecting the first 25 university teams. The selected teams were then invited to the Palais des Nations in Geneva to argue their cases.

 

Strathmore Law School was informed of its qualification into this stage, and were invited to participate in the pre-final rounds in early June. This was only the second time that the university qualified, given that—in contrast to its peers—it is relatively new, having only been launched in 2012.

 

Those representing the university included Maria-Louisa Wang’ondu- a second year student, Cecil Yongo- a fourth year student, and faculty representative and team coach Harrison Otieno.

 

The second stage was the: Oral arguments stage- where each team argued two rounds on each day. The sessions were intense and challenging as all participants were very prepared. Participants included universities from the United States (Yale Law School and Patrick Henry College), Australia (University of New South Wales), Kenya (Strathmore, Moi and Kisii Universities), Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, India (Hidayatullah University), Nepal, Japan (University of Tokyo), Belarus, Argentina (University of Buenos Aires) and Brazil (Sau Paulo University and 4 others) and China.

 

In the end, the finalists were announced based on average marks of both oralists of each university. The first were Patrick Henry College from the United States and the second were Moi University from Kenya. Moi University beat Strathmore by only 0.45 of a mark to reach the finals.

 

At the prize giving, it emerged that Strathmore had won best memorial out of all the schools, followed by Yale, Tokyo and China. The best oralists was won by Patrick Henry College, followed by Moi University and then Strathmore University.

 

Strathmore has cause to be pleased since this was the first time that an African university was winning one of the two awards up for grabs, noting that African universities rarely made it to the top 3 of memorial-writing.

 

Congratulations to the winning team!!!