On 24 – 25 November 2018, International Committee of the Red Cross held International Humanitarian Law Moot Court competition 2018 – Japan national round. Eight teams from eight universities participated in this competition: Aichi Perfectural University, Doshisha University, Hitotsubashi University, International Christian University, Seinan Gakuin University, Waseda University, Yokohama City University and The University of Tokyo.

Four people make up a team, representing their university, in general. Before the oral competition, each team is tasked to read the moot problem, released in July. They then use the knowledge of international law, especially International Humanitarian Law (IHL), and write both prosecutorial and defendant memorials. During the oral competition, each team acts both as councils of prosecutor and defendant, providing pleading and rebuttal. The judges are international law specialists and lawyers, and they ask questions regarding the knowledge of the law and the teams’ arguments in applying the law to the moot case. Councils should answer their questions in oral pleadings, while carefully considering how to manage time, how to make their argument strong in their arguments.

In general, four students constitute one team, but the team from the University of Tokyo had only two students:  Takenori Yamazaki (College of Liberal Arts, International Relations course, 4^th year) and Fei Tong (College of Liberal Arts, Human Science 1, 1st year). The coach of this team was Associate Professor Ai Kihara-Hunt (Graduate Program on Human Security; Deputy Director, Research Center for Sustainable Peace). We discussed main the legal points and analyzed the case with our respectful coach once a week from November and twice a week before the competition for two weeks.

The competition has the General Round, the Semi-Final Round and the Final Round. On the first day of the oral competition, our competition was against the joint team from Hitotsubashi and Waseda University (prosecutor) and Seinan Gakuin University (defendant). We prepared well, so we didn’t get confused too much in answering questions, however we got the second place at the end of the General Round. On the second day, we competed against Waseda University team at the Semi-Final Round. The Final Round was against the team from Doshisha University. We were Prosecutorial councils and the Doshisha team acted for councils for the defendant. It was a heated competition. In the rebuttal, we successfully made a strong impression on the judges with clear and orderly legal arguments. Finally, the University of Tokyo team won the first prize and gained the seat for Asia Regional Round, to be held in Hong Kong next year.

(written by Ms. Tong Fei)