The UP team was joined in the youth contingent by representatives from Stellenbosch University and North-West University as well as members of the North-West Provincial Parliament, resulting in South Africa being one of the most represented countries and the University of Pretoria one of the most represented universities at this Forum.

The G20 Youth Forum is an international non-governmental, non-profit organisation with the aim of creating a platform for alumni, experts, academics, parliamentarians as well as business representatives to interact and to cooperate on a day-to-day basis over a wide variety of issues. It is intended that this will one day lead to a common global community working together to solve current world problems.

The forum consisted of different discussion tables which included world politics and international relations, international law and legislation, world economy and finance, social dimension: youth, education and gender, as well as innovation, technology and science.

Two students from the University of Pretoria had the honour of presenting papers to the international audience. As a representative of the Faculty of Law, Martie Bradley delivered a paper at the Law and Legislation roundtable on ’Drone warfare:  A necessity for national security, or government sponsored (justified) anonymous execution?’. Vincent Dadam Kosga Djaowe delivered a paper at the World Economy and Finance roundtable on ‘Monetary Policy and Unemployment’.  Both these papers were included in the international conference journal, which will be circulated to the relevant international bodies. 

According to Martie Bradley, "this was a great platform for young academics and students to exchange ideas on research and publishing in an international journal for the first time.  The diversity of the cultural background of the participants gave a more realistic view of international issues as one has insight into the other side of the coin.  Issues regarding the developing world and education were also discussed and students exchanged ideas on how to overcome these obstacles. It was truly a once in a lifetime opportunity for which we are very thankful and we owe Tuks a great deal of appreciation for making this possible.”

The participants from the University of Pretoria were Dr Mzukisi Qobo, a PhD (Politics) student of the University of Warwick and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences; Ms Martha Magdalena Bradley, an LLM (International Law) student and an academic associate at the Department of Public Law, Faculty of Law; Mr Vincent Dadam Kosga Djaowe, an MCom (Economics) student and research assistant in the Department of Economics; Ms Sithembile Mbete, a PhD (International Relations) student in the Department of Political Sciences; Mr Erik Meyer, an MCom (Financial Sciences) student; and Mr Ismaeel Samaai, a BPolSci LLM student and an assistant lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences.

From the left:  Ismaeel Samaai, Louis Botha Bradley, Sithembile Mbete, Vincent Dadam Kosga Djaowe,
Martie Bradley and Erik Meyer.

*   Source and for more information visit http://www.g20youth.org/
**  Click here for the G20 Youth Forum Results.