If you have attended EPM Zagreb 2017, you might have assisted to the final round of the debate competition organised by the Civic Education Working Group. The debate in Zagreb was just the last step of a journey started last year in November when Balint Toronyai from AEGEE-Budapest and Doro Harles from AEGEE-Mannheim, members of the CEWG sent an open call for topics. We spoke with them to understand how the competition went. 

Why did you decide to do the competition? 
Bálint: We participated in some amazing debates during the Summer University of AEGEE-Warszawa last summer. We experienced how competitive debating can improve complex and critical thinking in a really fun way. After both of us joined the Civic Education Working Group we decided to organise this competition to strengthen civic competencies and promote debating in the AEGEE community.

How did you select participants? 
Bálint: The application for the competition was open for every AEGEE member; however there were two conditions: the applicants had to be available in Zagreb during the EPM where the final debate took place and they had to apply in pairs (or pair-up with the other single participants) as the debate format and the winning prize were created for such teams. The applicants had to write about their motivation, debating experience and answer some other simple questions, but the true selection was coming in the pre-round of the competition.

Who were the teams? 
Bálint: Most of the teams were formed by people who already knew each other, with one exception where we matched two single participants. It was a really diverse field, seven different AEGEE antennas were proudly represented: Skopje, Heidelberg, Osnabrück, Nijmegen, Bilbao, Zaragoza and Ljubljana. It is easy to say that it was a truly European debate competition.

What was the structure of the debate? 
Bálint: There were two rounds of the debate competition. The pre-round was an online round, where the teams had to prepare video statements with their arguments and send them to us and to their debate opposition. This online way of debating was far from optimal, but it was a compromise we had to take for a Europe-wide debate. The best four teams of the pre-round qualified to the live final which took place at EPM Zagreb. The format of the final was the classical British Parliamentary debate, where two teams have to compete with each other both on the government and the opposition side. This complex way of debating makes it possible to approach issues from multiple angles. 

What were the topics debated? 
Doro: In the pre-round, there were three topics, in debates called proposals, debated on: “This house believes that (THBT) migration should be promoted in the EU”, “THBT an unconditional basic income should be established in the EU” and “THBT people older than 70 should not vote”. The topics were chosen from a bunch of ideas send from the Network in an open call for topics. The proposal at the final was “THBT referendums should be forbidden in national democracies” and fitted to the topic of the EPM “Populism and Anti-European Agitation”.

What was the reaction? Are you satisfied with the result?
Doro: The audience at the final was interested in the topic and the format used to bring the topic closer to people. They could also participate in it by voting before and after the debate which side they were on: for or against the proposal. After the debate, more people were for the proposal than before. In general, the audience liked the event. The participants could develop and practice their skills in public speaking during the competition and all managed the speech in front of a big audience well. We are very satisfied with the development that our participants made over time and that people were interested and not super bored by debating. About the result in the sense of the winners, we cannot say that we would have liked one time better than the other. We are delighted with the winners who are happy about winning the two interrail tickets.

Would you replicate it in other events? 
Doro: We were already thinking about it because a competition is a good way to show that debating can be interesting. Yet, we need to have a fitting event, time to prepare it and find a good prize for the next time. Maybe we are going to do it a bit smaller than this time. Nothing is settled yet but we are working on it.

Is there something you want to add?
Doro: Maybe people got inspired by the debate from EPM and want to organise one in their locals or somewhere else. We have updated the debating toolkit and people can find all relevant information there. Check it out!

Written by Erika Bettin, AEGEE-Verona

In order to strengthen civic competences in AEGEE, the Civic Education Working Group has been promoting debating throughout the year. Why? Debating was proven to improve academic achievements, critical thinking, mutual understanding, as well as communication, argumentation and interpersonal skills. In short it helps you to know more and form a better-founded opinion. Today we are taking the debate online for the first time, with a topic that challenges the very basis of our organisation! 

For each topic, a defending and an opposing motion will be presented. You can express your opinion and continue to debate on the forum. Note that these statements are not necessarily the person’s personal opinion, nor are the arguments they use indisputable.

I have a very vivid memory of my first contact with the Declaration of Human Rights. I was preparing for an inter-school competition on this topic and was desperately trying to memorise all 30 articles by heart. It was extremely difficult because in my naïve and unaware teenage mind, I found them trivial and self-evident and I could not imagine how and why one can be openly deprived of any of them. And please keep in mind that I was growing up in Poland during the times when memories of communist crimes were still very fresh.

In the western cultural circle, where a linear concept of time is predominant, we tend to assume that our society is constantly morally developing and the future can be only better. However, looking at an ever-repeating history, we find plenty of examples like war crimes and genocides, which clearly show we do not learn from our mistakes. This makes the Human Rights, written and declared right after Europe’s most fatal genocide in modern times, more relevant than ever before. Sadly, we don’t have to look hundreds of years into the past to see violation of Human Rights in Europe. We have seen many recent failures in the face of the refugee crisis. Even without any current crisis, we can easily point to many places on the map where Human Rights are not part of society’s everyday life.

I wish that Human Rights would be regarded as old-fashioned, well practiced and as obvious for everybody as they were for my teenage-self. But it is hard to go further if you have not even arrived at the attempted status quo.

What is more, I don’t believe any of the social developments or other 21st century context issues could possibly influence relevance of the Human Rights. It really does not matter if people are riding horses or flying cars, living in tribes or in the European Union, they still have same basic needs and deserve certain rights. Human Rights represent core values of humankind, imperative in their style of writing and applicable to every human being on the globe. It still remains innovative when it comes to the formal aspect of it being a Declaration. Even in the framework of the European Union, we witness a complete lack of cohesion when it comes to rights regarding the asylum execution. Taking into account the complexity of the world we live in and political games, there is no higher success than the recognition of a universal framework.

Last but not least, I would really not underestimate the power of the Declaration.  It has a huge sophistic potential when it comes to open confrontations. The only problem is that we don’t confront those who fail to respect Human Rights as much as we should. This can not be changed by any new legislation. We don’t need another dead letter. What we need is to enforce the Declaration even more as a set of standards to measure ourselves against and keep striving for everyone to finally take seriously what we have universally agreed to.

You can read the defending motion here.

If you want to give your imputs and continue with the debate you can go to the forum via this link.

Written by Joanna, Civic Education Working Group

In order to strengthen civic competences in AEGEE, the Civic Education Working Group has been promoting debating throughout the year. Why? Debating was proven to improve academic achievements, critical thinking, mutual understanding, as well as communication, argumentation and interpersonal skills. In short it helps you to know more and form a better-founded opinion. Today we are taking the debate online for the first time, with a topic that challenges the very basis of our organisation! 

For each topic, a defending and an opposing motion will be presented. You can express your opinion and continue to debate on the forum. Note that these statements are not necessarily the person’s personal opinion, nor are the arguments they use indisputable.

Human Rights, the only good thing we have in this world, isn’t it? Or is it? Now imagine you have to think of one bad thing about Human Rights today. What would that be?

Human Rights might have been, and still are, the most important, liberating, long fought for, inventive and inclusive way to make human lives across the planet as decent as possible. Yet, one bad thing about Human Rights development is the fact that the development itself stopped where it is. Yes, mankind did something extraordinary, but stopping only there might not have been the best idea in such a fast progressive society. Right now we need more. More concreteness and a better implementation. One of the major and most noticeable drawbacks of Human Rights today is the failure of their implementation.

Even if we are talking about a document that has been adopted by the majority of countries around the world, disasters which disobey the convention are vastly happening all around the world, and rarely do they manage to reach the International court of Justice and Human Rights. Indeed, we could trace the reasoning for such happenings on a grass-root level, and blame the countries themselves, and yet, it would still continue to happen. They were new back in their time, they were revolutionary, and not all countries were in favour of them, that we all know by now. However, today, there might be space for considering mandatory implementing strategies, and not dependence on the reluctance of countries. And yet, this should not sound western and colonizing, as the next step accompanying would be the importance of the cultural sensitivity that the Human Rights lack. They are indeed our common denominator, and in that sense they are as broad as it gets, but if all the countries would take some time and effort to create directives and legislation that would be as inclusive, grass-root, context sensitive, and culturally adopted, then maybe we could talk about possible coverage of all the rights and all the territories.

Putting everything that was already said aside, we could all agree that Human Rights might be considered quite outdated. Not only that new issues have arisen, that are not addressed in the convention so far, but some of the already existing ones make no sense today anymore.  For example, if we take a look at this: “Everyone has the right to a nationality.” Then it would make us think indeed, was this an issue in the past, can it still be an issue today, how relevant is it, and whether it can be from today’s perspective addressed in a different way?

Arguing that Human Rights are bad as such is something not so favorable and accepted. We would all be happier to just accept them and praise them as they are. Yet, it makes me wonder, if we would be as critical of them as we praise them, would a possible door for change start to open?

You can read the opposing motion here.

If you want to give your imputs and continue with the debate you can go to the forum via this link.

Written by Andrea, Civic Education Working Group