Inter-Regional Debating Competition underway by South Asia Students For Liberty
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The Sri Lanka chapter of Students For Liberty (SFL), along with South Asia Students for Liberty (SASFL), has launched their first ever inter-regional debate competition this year, with the partnership and participation of seven regions across South Asia, namely Sri Lanka, North India, South India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nepal.
The objective of this debate is to educate the future leaders on Liberty and Libertarian concepts, and to connect people around Asia by sharing their ideas. Through the debate, we try to spark conversations on the topic of liberty while encouraging young change makers to think critically about the idea of liberty.
SFL South Asia Programs Manager Ayemen Fatima commented, “At SFL we believe ideas are best propagated through an enriching discourse. With the Pandemic, as most of our events shifted online, the regional debates provided us a bridge to share the ideas of Liberty across borders.
Young attendees were introduced to the topics of free markets and individual rights, and encouraged to think deeply about effective policy making. I’m very proud of the efforts of our organizing team and we look forward to hosting the finals.”
Students For Liberty is a rapidly growing network of pro-liberty students from all over the world. Our mission is to educate, develop, and empower the next generation of leaders of liberty and we pride ourselves as the largest pro-liberty student organization in the world. We accomplish this through a strategy of empowerment, identifying the top student leaders and training them to be agents of change in their communities.
In 2019, SFL officially initiated their Sri Lankan chapter under the South Asia Students for Liberty which currently represents 8 countries in the South Asian region. Starting with just 8 local coordinators, in 2020 SFL Sri Lankan chapter has grown into 20+ local coordinators working tirelessly in advancing liberty, freedom, democracy, human rights, rule of law, freedom of expression, individual freedom, free markets and education for liberal thinking throughout the country. We have also had the privilege of conducting several collaborative events with some of the leading local think tanks such as Advocata Institute and Hashtag Generation as well as youth organizations like Rotaract and Hype Sri Lanka covering various areas of public interests.
The first phase of the debate tournament was a series of national level debates on the ideas of freedom, equality and liberty. Regionals were held in both regions in India and Bangladesh, with the participation of many teams clamouring to make their way to the inter-regional debate. Following the national tournament, the three winners of the regions proceeded to the semi-finals.
The remaining regions conducted their qualifier round on the 13th of March, with team Sri Lanka emerging winners and going on to compete in the semi finals against the teams from North India, South India, and Bangladesh.
Speaking on the debate tournament, Regional Coordinator for Sri Lanka ThilokaYapa said, “I am extremely happy that the local coordinators from South Asia came up with the idea of organizing this debate, coordinating with each other across South Asia, despite the physical barriers they had to bring out a successful event at the end of the day. I am grateful to all the hard work, commitment and dedication exhibited by these local coordinators throughout the five months of organizing the debates.”
The debate was organized with local coordinators from across South Asia joining in the efforts, and has been one of the biggest projects done by the Sri Lanka Students For Liberty chapter this year.
IynulHamdiyaThahir, one of the members of the finalist team of Sri Lanka, said, “This debate competition was not just a mere competition but a platform that helped me understand my true potential and meet more people who were like me not just in Sri Lanka but all throughout Asia. This gave me the opportunity to explore ideals of culture and different people despite the fact that I was only present virtually.”
The finals are scheduled to be held this weekend with the participation of the South Asia region as well as the Students For Liberty regional staff.