Doha College has been crowned Qatar’s first ever debating champions after a fiercely contested day of competition at the inaugural Qatar National Schools Debating Championships. The event took place at Education City and was organised by QatarDebate – the national debating organisation of Qatar – which is a member of the Qatar Foundation.

20 teams from schools across the country took part in the competition, which was judged by QatarDebate coaches and by teachers who had taken part in QatarDebate faculty workshops.

The full tab from the competition and list of students selected to trial for the Qatar National Schools' Team can be found here: Qatar National Schools' 2008 Results

The first annual Qatar National Universities Debating Competition was held in Education City on Friday 14th March, with 10 university team competing in 3 rounds of debate, breaking to a grand final. The competition was organised by Qatardebate, the national debating organisation for Qatar, and is the culmination of a programme aimed at encouraging universities in Qatar to form debating societies, trained by QatarDebate's international coaches.

The competition was won by Cornell Medical School Qatar B (Marwa Saleh, Rahima Sanya, Nadine Saad), who beat another team from Cornell (Anas Abou-Ismail, Adam Khader, Anas Ahmad) in the Final on the motion THW never censor political comment.

Five high school students have been selected for the first ever National Debating Team to represent Qatar at the next World Schools Debating Championships in Washington DC in September.

The team members were chosen from 17 high school students who attended trials over the weekend at Education City. The trials were organised by QatarDebate, the national debating organisation for the country, which is a member of Qatar Foundation.

The members of the National Schools Debating Team for Qatar are:

Meeran Naji from Qatar Academy
Talal Burshaid from Qatar Leadership Academy
Vartan Shadarevian from Doha College
Tina Niaki from Doha College
Fatima Hijran from Al-Bayan Independent School

The first ever Qatar National Schools' Debating Competition will take place on Wednesday 12th March in Education City, followed the first Qatar National Universities Debating Competition on Thursday 13th March. Both of these competitions will take place as part of a week of debating events from 9th - 16th March. The week will culminate with the selection of 5 students from highschools in Qatar to represent Qatar at the World Schools' Debating Championships which will take place in Washington DC in September 2008.

The QatarDebate website has now been launched. Over the coming months, we hope that the website will provide a way of coordinating debating in Qatar, providing students and teachers debating resources and linking debaters into the international debating community. At the moment the website only contains basic content but will be updated continuously over the coming weeks.