Doha – QatarDebate
Under the patronage of Her Excellency Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al Thani, Vice Chairperson and CEO of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF); the 5th International Universities Debating Championship, organized by the QatarDebate Centre at Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC) kicks off today, Saturday March 16.
Fifty two countries including 15 Arabic-speaking and 37 non-Arabic speaking will participate in the championship. They include Algeria, Austria, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Indonesia, India, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Macedonia, Malaysia, The Maldives, Mauritius, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Serbia, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Sweden, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, USA, Vietnam, and Yemen.
The championship aims to strengthen educational and cultural relations among the participating countries and open up opportunities to strengthen the relationship and urges sharing experiences among Arabic-speaking and non-Arabic speaking youth.
It also aims to raise the open discussion standards, secure freedom of expression in the Arab world and the world as a whole and respect the difference of opinion.
The championship supports the mission of QF to unlock human potential by fostering a culture of discussion and debate, helping shape the global citizens of the future and create intellectual leaders of tomorrow.
A trial round will be held to involve all participating teams.
A trial round involving all the teams participating in the championship without recording any scores will take place on the first day.
Mohammed Salman, Debate Coach, has pointed out that the trial round is aimed to allow the teams get in the mood for the championship before the actual rounds begin since some of the debaters are not aware of the atmosphere of the championship and its rounds and therefore they will not be able to control their feelings.
“The trial round was found to be necessary for the participants to encourage and prepare them psychologically. The trial round steps will be similar to the actual rounds in terms of the random selection of competing teams, identifying the house, the opposition and the adjudication panel and their comments, while the only difference is no scores are recorded,” explained Salman.
As for the Power Matching scheme, Salman said, “The debating teams will be randomly matched in the first round and then the Power Matching scheme will be applied to ensure a high level of competition and make sure the best teams to be qualified for the round 16 and the final rounds that depend after five rounds on the number of winning debates and the knockout scheme.
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