(left to right) Jessie-Mae, Claudine Magallanes and Shaquille Gurung.Bournemouth University (BU) Law students studying in the Department of Humanities and Law, part of the Faculty of Media and Communication competed in the annual Observatory of Human Rights Policy Advocacy Competition receiving a ‘highly commended’ second-place position.
The Observatory of Human Rights is a collaborative project providing a forum for research, debate, education and knowledge exchange on human rights of children and young people. The annual Policy Advocacy Competition allows students from universities around the UK to put their skills into practice acting as policy advocates for Children and Human Rights.
The BU Undergraduate Law Students came second to a team from Glasgow University. Professor Simon Hoffman, Chair of the Observatory of Human Rights for Children, and the judges decided to award the BU team an additional prize of ‘highly commended’, commenting:
“The standard of presentations was very high, and the level of research and preparation that went into your contribution was obvious to all. The judges found it extremely challenging to decide a winner. With this in mind, we have decided to take the exceptional step to commend your presentation as 'highly commended' to acknowledge the very high standard of your work.”
The BU team included Jessie-Mae Leeson, Team Captain, Leah Browning, Shaquille Gurung, Claudine Magallanes and Jazz White. As part of the first round, the students had to act as officials in drafting a 5000-word policy briefing to a ‘fictional’ children’s minister. The briefing required arguing the case for the removal of the defence of ‘justifiable punishment’ or ‘smacking.’ This required students to undertake detailed research on international human rights regimes including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the UN Convention on Rights of a Child (UNCRC), and international comparative approaches to smacking, to support their argument. The team came in the top 8 and were invited to attend the second round of the competition.
The second round of the competition required the students to provide a 20-minute oral presentation of their arguments to a panel of judges. The panel included:
· Professor Sally Holland (former Children’s Commissioner for Wales)
· Juliet Harris (Director of Together Scotland)
· Shauneen Lambe (Co-founder and CEO of Just Kids Law & Co-founder of Impact Social Justice)
The students who are currently in their second year at BU studying family law as part of their degree were guided by Dr Matthew Watkins, Lecturer in Law at BU who said: “I’m extremely proud of the hard work and dedication demonstrated by the students. The result is especially outstanding considering that the students were up against Postgraduate students from universities with long traditions of competition advocacy.”
The lecture, along with the awards ceremony can be viewed on the YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/live/6LO6_f7PAMw
For further information about the courses available to study in the Department of Humanities and Law, please visit the BU website.
