Daily Times

The youth of Pakistan must think critically and weigh the information they receive before making a judgement or sharing it with others.

This was the lesson imparted to young energetic debaters at a National Declamation Challenge among students from public-sector universities from all over Pakistan.

Organized on Thursday under the umbrella of the Pakistan Centre of Excellence (PACE), a subsidiary of the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), the two-day contest drew 47 students from 14 universities and generated intense debates on issues such as women empowerment, secular democracy, diversity, tolerance, rule of law, and religious harmony, among many others.

The event cantered on the principle that the processing of information requires logic and bipartisan dissection of facts to determine the truth from misinformation. The first phase of the challenge consisted of speeches made by all participants in three rounds, with students selected from each round on the basis of content, strategy, and speaking prowess. The selected 10 finalists went head-to-head in the finals, with a single victor. Prominent journalists Amber Rahim Shamsi, Safiullah Gul, and Zubair Azam were the esteemed judges for the final competition.