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Invisible threats loom over the futures of today’s youth: climate change, cyber instability, international armed conflicts, global inequality, the erosion of trust. At the Geneva Graduate Institute, students note the need to engage and intersectionally untangle the weaving threads of different disciplines that influence global geopolitics and our daily lives alike. The Geneva Debate aims to continue being the city’s preeminent student debate on current affairs and global development. 

This edition of the Geneva Debate is the inaugural edition of the inter-university debate called ‘The Invitational’. The Invitational’s principle premise is to provide a platform for student’s at the Institute to go head-to-head against some of the most celebrated debating societies around the world. For this edition, the Institute will be debating against Oxford Union. 
Ecocide, the destruction of the environment, has increasingly become a concern for the international community, with various environmental disasters and climate change effects becoming more evident. In the interest of finding accountability and the correct medium for this, The Geneva Debate proposes the following motion:

The House Supports Ecocide as a Principle in International Humanitarian Law

On 15 March 2023, teams from the Geneva Graduate Institute and Oxford Union will engage in an hour-long debate at Maison de la Paix in front of an online audience and a distinguished panel of judges. A 30-minute post-debate analysis will follow, which will allow debaters and members of the jury to reflect the Institute's culture of seeking to understand complex problems and propose nuanced solutions.

Can International Geneva lead as a global beacon of hope for peace and development in an era of radical uncertainty? The Geneva Debate answers in the affirmative. Almost a hundred years after the founding of the Institute, a group of students will seek to create a new space for conversation and reflection in our institution that responds to the challenges, solutions and ideas that will shape our footprint as future leaders in the XXI century.