“Abyss of Nations” a debate competition that was organized by students belonging to Amity Institute of Liberal Arts department on 12th April 2019 in the Moot court. Students belonging to different streams had actively participated in this event, Prof. Anil Variath, deputy director of Amity Law School as well as Deepika Golatkar, of Amity Institute of Liberal Arts had agreed to be the judge of this event. In this event, the participants had to form a delegation of two delegates representing a country and debate on their respective topic. The event consisted of two rounds, in the first round, there were four delegations, representing State of Israel, State of Palestine, Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia and Islamic Republic of Iran. The fixture of the event were as follows,
- State of Israel v/s State of Palestine on the topic of Palestine issue.
In this fixture, State of Israel was against 2 state theory and State of Palestine would claim its rights over West Bank and Gaza.
- Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia v/s Islamic Republic of Iran on Iran Nuclear deal.
In this fixture, Islamic Republic of Iran will justify this nuclear deal and Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia will be against the nuclear deal.
The debate was structured in a particular way, in which each delegation was allotted 4 minutes to present their points followed by a rebuttal period of 9 minutes. The delegates were advised to use last minutes for their concluding points. In this way, the two debate fixtures were conducted. After the conclusion of the two debate fixtures, the judges took some time to decide who the winners of the respective debates were. Once the judges finalised the result, delegates representing State of Palestine and Islamic Republic of Iran were declared as winners of their respective debate fixtures and progressed towards second round also known as final round. In the final round, the delegates had to represent other countries, which were Germany and Japan.
After the result declaration, the two delegations had to choose a card, which contained the flags of the included countries. The card that the delegate chose and the flag which was in the card, the delegates were assigned that country. The delegation representing Islamic Republic of Iran in first round, was representing Japan in final round and the delegation that was representing State of Palestine, was representing Germany. After assigning countries, the delegations were allotted 10 minutes as preparation time. After the preparation time was over, the delegations were requested to take their respective places and start with their presentation. The time for presentation was same as it was in first round followed a rebuttal period of 9 minutes where the delegates were raising questions and counter arguments. After this debate was over, the judges started to finalise their decision on who the winner should be of this event. After thorough discussion, the judges came to conclusion that the delegation representing Germany should be declared as the winner of “Abyss of Nations”. Following this, a prize distribution ceremony was held, where the teams were awarded for their performance.
The main objective of this event was
- To organize a debate competition in the line of UN assembly debate.
- To inculcate academic debating skills among students.
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- To create awareness amongst students regarding world politics and pressing issues at international forum.
- To encourage the students for reading and staying updated on issues of international concern.