King's team win international law and diplomacy competition for the second year in a row

 
(l-r)The King's team: Francois Doumont, Abdullah El Maghraby, Amy Liu,Sophia Schroeder, Omar Nwoko.

A team of five LLM students from The Dickson Poon School of Law have won a prestigious international law and diplomacy competition hosted by the Université Paris X Nanterre under the direction of Professor Jean-Marc Thouvenin and sponsored by international law firm Simmons & Simmons. A team from King's also won the competition in 2014.

The international ‘Day of Crisis’ competition requires teams to respond to a series of ‘real life’ real-time events during an intense 24 hour period.  This year the team had to advise on a fictional outbreak of raccoon flu originating in China and spreading to Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam. The crisis involved China using a US patent without permission, triggering a trade war. At the same time, the team was faced with a crisis in Syria, a cyber attack on India from a privately-owned weaponised satellite, and bombings in Qatar and Pakistan.

The King’s team worked non-stop for 24 hours, culminating in a mock session of the Security Council. They had to produce over a dozen pieces of written legal advice, conduct multiple negotiations, engage in a press interview and make a final presentation.

The Jury for the competition included Mr Gian Luca Burci, Director of the Legal Department of the World Health Organization, Mr Nicola Bonucci, Director of the Legal Department of the OECD, and Ms Caroline Sitbon, Director of the Legal Department of GlaxoSmithKline.

In addition to winning the entire competition, the King’s team was awarded second place for the Security Council Intervention Speech (Omar Nwoko), the Joint Jury Prize for Best Spontaneous Speech (Sophia Schroeder), and second place for negotiations.

The Dickson Poon School of Law was invited by Université Paris X Nanterre to represent the UK in the competition. Teams representing France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Brazil and Russia also competed.

The King’s team comprised: Francois Doumont, Abdullah El Maghraby, Amy Liu, Omar Nwoko, and Sophia Schroeder. As with last year’s winning team, the King’s team was coached by Dr Philippa Webb, Lecturer in Public International Law, and Kirsten Roberts, Dickson Poon Scholar and PhD candidate.