What we do today about our youth’s education and upbringing would have consequences that would last a century or more. The part of that education that is due to debating activities and involvement in WUPID is not without any constructive outcome in the foreseeable future. The wind of peace and tolerance we sent in the debating atmosphere in 2007 will stay there until 2017 and beyond.
We are therefore making choices today that will affect our lives, but even more so the lives of our children and grandchildren. This makes WUPID different and more difficult than any other policy challenges.
Since it inception in 2007, WUPID has become one of the leading debate tournaments in Malaysia and around the world. It has received wide participation from the 30 top university debate teams of the world, which includes top Ivy-league universities such as Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge, Sydney and many more.
The tournament strategically held in Malaysia allows for local varsity and school debaters to be exposed to the debating skills and critical thinking that these debaters have to offer. For many years our local debaters and those from across the region would have to make expensive trips abroad and participate in tournaments such as the Oxford or Cambridge Inter-varsity to receive world-class debate trainings. We are fortunate to have WUPID listed on the same par as those tournaments in a mere 3 years.
The objective of the tournament is to have the best university debaters to discuss and argue peace related issues and formulate possible conflict resolutions during their debating sessions. The organizers hope, that debating activities like this would be able to foster respect, tolerance and most importantly, togetherness in a world which despite all the technological advancements, very much worlds apart. Often, it is the fear and apprehension of our differences – ideological and cultural – that motivate people to exhibit certain behavior, which may be considered belligerent. After taking part in WUPID, we hope that the world’s future leaders and policy makers would be more broadminded and forbearing to the diversity of cultures and ideologies which are in contrast and dissimilar to theirs. In the long run, we hope that WUPID would later be a preferred youth platform for the discussion and debate of proposed international policies.
There are a number of elite schools that are eligible to attend WUPID. Most of them get a chance to debate against a few other elite schools from time to time at tournaments in their region, or every year they might have a chance to debate some of them at the World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC). But, these opportunities are rare and punctuated by debates against other fine teams that are not among the global elite.
At WUPID, however, debate after debate will be against the finest teams in the worlds, and the elimination rounds should be some of the finest debates anywhere in the world. Each round will consist of an incredibly impressive foursome of debate teams. Such an event would only happen in the later elimination rounds at WUDC. This will be a unique opportunity to debate the best and become even better in the process. WUPID is, without a doubt, a tournament of champions. A strong WUPID showing, against the best in the world, is something any debate program can be extremely proud of.
