13 November 2019
November 7th-10th, the international student competition on international investment arbitration, the Foreign Direct Investment Arbitration Moot (FDI Moot), held its global oral rounds.
This stage of the competition brings together the best student teams from the most competitive law faculties and law schools of leading universities from countries the world over, who have been successful in national and regional qualifying rounds. This year the global rounds were organized on the campus of the University of Miami’s School of Law (USA) and were attended by 110 student teams from 31 countries. The yearly international competitions are organized by the Center for International Legal Studies (Salzburg, Austria).
The working language of the FDI Arbitration Moot is English and the competition is a simulated arbitration between a foreign investor and a host state. It consists of two stages: first the teams prepare written memoranda for the plaintiff and the defendant on the problem and then they orally defend the position before arbitrators, who are authoritative professionals in the field of international investment law.
After successfully coming up against the representatives of the universities of Ukraine, Poland, India and South Korea in the group round, the MGIMO student team (V.Bulatova, A.Alekhina, T.Petrova, I.Gildina, A.Alimova and A.Niyazliev) made it through to the playoff stage of the moot. In this stage, our team won against the teams from the universities of Argentina, India and Greece. For the first time since the launch of the moot in 2008, two Russian student teams from MGIMO and Saint Petersburg University met in the final and our team came 2nd.
In March this year, MGIMO students won the prestigious international competition for international investment arbitration the Frankfurt Investment Arbitration Moot Court (FIAMC) in Frankfurt am main (Germany), which also gathered students from the best universities’ law schools in the world.
The MGIMO student teams have been coached by the Professor of the Department of International Law D.Labin since 2009. G.Obolentsev, a graduate of MGIMO (2019), who successfully participated in the moot during his student years also helped to prepare the team for the global rounds this year.
The participation of students in international legal competitions is sponsored by the Deputy Chairman of MGIMO’s Board of Trustees A.Usmanov. This year, the international law firm "Clifford Chance" also offered financial support to MGIMO’s team.
— See the MGIMO web-site for russian version
