The UNWE Law Team Were Awarded Honorary Certificates for the Excellent Performance in Helga Pedersen Human Rights Moot Court Competition
At an official ceremony the Rector awarded certificates of merit to the students of the UNWE law team who achieved excellent results at the prestigious Helga Pedersen International Human Rights Moot Court Competition. The event was attended by the Deputy Minister of Justice Emil Dechev, Attorney at Law Dimitar Delchev, representative of the Association for International Law Competitions /AILC/, the UNWE Rector's Managing body, the Deans of the Faculties, the Chief Secretaries, lecturers and officials. All attendees appreciated the great success of the UNWE team as it is a well-established international student competition, the largest English-speaking human rights competition in the world, involving teams from universities in all member states of the Council of Europe. It is organized by the European Law Students Association /ELSA/ and held under the patronage of the Council of Europe.
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| Prof. Dr. Dimitar Dimitrov and Deputy Minister of Justice Emil Dechev |
"It is a great international recognition for our law team which shows that we are not only strong in economics and finance but also in other specialties. We know there are a lot of efforts made behind this award - by the Law Faculty, the Dean, the professors who have prepared the students, their coaches who have worked with them for months, and most of all the student participants themselves. I would like to point out that they have competed against teams from universities that have an annual budget of over 2 billion dollars unmatched by the budget of UNWE. And as economists, we know how important resources are. And yet our students with intellect, persistence and a lot of stubbornness achieve these high positions", greeted his students the Rector of UNWE Prof. Dr. Dimitar Dimitrov.
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| The coaches Martina Bogdanova and Hristo Peshev with An-Nikol Voynska, Rositsa Toneva, Elina Kostadinova and Ileya Rashid |
"In this international competition you have stood against your colleagues from elite universities in Europe, you have competed against them and you have passed this 'test' brilliantly too. In this way you have objectively understood where you stand, how much you can do, and something very important - you have acqiured self-confidence. You realized that you are not only on the level of your colleagues but you can even be better than them. You have realized that you can be at the center of the legal work here and in Europe. The law, in fact, is a more abstract ethics and by studying Law you learn ethical values and by learning human rights values you actually become part of the European family", said the Deputy Minister Dechev.
Att. Dimitar Delchev, founder of the Association for International Law Competitions /AILC/, greeted the team and emphasized the good cooperation the Association has with the UNWE. He greeted the students for the great efforts they have made as such a competition requires days of reading, dedicated work to stand against the best in the world who have professional teams preparing them for years. "These students are ready to be representatives of the Bulgarian state in defence of human rights", said Att. Dimitar Delchev.
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The Dean of the Law Faculty Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zahary Tormanov added: "Our team competed with the best in the world sharing the third place with the Oxford team. The success is very serious and I would like to say the names of the main heroes: Hristo Peshev and Martina Bogdanova - coaches, human rights experts from the Association for International Law Competitions. The students in the team are their 3rd year of speciality Law - An-Nikol Voynska, Elina Kostadinova, Ileya Rashid and Rositsa Toneva, semester student who graduated in the course of the competition.
He made a comparison to the biblical battle between David and Goliath. "Our David, our team performed brilliantly but just as in the biblical battle David did not set out as doomed, he set out with his qualities and advantages, with his real capabilities, so our team had its advantages, these are the good, methodical and quality training under the expert guidance of the coaches", said Assoc. Prof. Tormanov.
Martina Bogdanova introduced her colleague Hristo Peshev as a participant in the first Bulgarian team of the competition in 2015, a man with great experience in both human rights and competitions. "The participation in this competition requires many qualities: discipline, reordering of priorities, enormous preparation, even during the summer we held trainings, students had the task to prepare written defences in English and during the competition everyone did very well, showed knowledge and character", said Martina Bogdanova.
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Information about the Competition
In the current year Helga Pedersen Moot Court Competition was held for 11th time. The main theme was the protection against discrimination and the effective exercise of rights arising from the protection against interference with the complainant's private and family life.
The competition is held in three main stages - written defence submissions for both countries in mid-December, regional oral rounds in February and final oral rounds in May. All teams compete in the first two rounds and only 18 teams that achieve the highest average scores in the previous rounds qualify for the final round, which takes place at the buildings of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
For the first time there were two Bulgarian teams at the final rounds - the team of St. Climent Ohridsky University of Sofia and the team of UNWE. As a gesture of appreciation the students from UNWE were invited to a reception at the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Bulgaria to the Council of Europe on 22 May 2023 and in the following days the Permanent Representative and her Deputy attended the matches of the UNWE students as a sign of support.
The UNWE took part in the competition for the first time in the past academic year 2021-2022 and performed excellently beating the teams from the University College of Dublin, University of Southampton Law School, Queen Mary University of London, Charles University and others but without reaching the finals.
For the current school year 2022-2023 the team was formed in the beginning of July 2022 and consisted of four participants - Ann-Nikol Voynska, Elina Kostadinova, Ileya Rashid and Rositsa Toneva. The participants went through an intensive summer training on Protection of Fundamental Human Rights in the period July-September. After the publication of the case in mid-September the team held weekly meetings to prepare written defences for the complainant and the State before the European Court of Human Rights. These were successfully filed in mid-December and after that the team preparation continued with the development of oral argument skills in the courtroom. In February 2023 the students successfully participated in the regional rounds in Tbilisy, Georgia where they competed against the teams of St. Climent Ohridsky University of Sofia and Vilnius University - universities with traditions in the competition, having reached and won the finals of Helga Pedersen Moot Court Competition.
The final rounds of the competition were held between 22 and 26 May 2023 in Strasbourg, France. They are divided into several stages - preliminary elimination rounds in two steps, quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals which take place consecutively on the days mentioned above. In the initial elimination phase the team of St. Climent Ohridsky University of Sofia was eliminated while the UNWE team continued to the quarterfinals pleading in the match of the teams with the fourth and fifth best scores /the distribution is first vs. eighth, second vs. seventh, third vs. sixth and fourth vs. fifth - by score/. In the quarter-final match they defeated the IE University Madrid team which relies on a one-semester specialized training by professors and which won unanimously the prize for the best written defence of a defendant. In the semi-final match, the students of UNWE faced the team of the University of Maastricht which was also the big winner of the competition, and the decision on who should continue was made in the so-called split bench /decision by the Chairman of the panel in case of equal votes of the judges/. In the unanimous opinion of both the judges and the coaches of the other participating teams the girls had excellent oratory skills and reasoning and the match in which they competed in the semi-final was at an even higher level than the final match itself.
