Three young people have been selected to represent Gibraltar at international political events which will take place in London later this month.

The first event is the UKOTA Youth Summit which will take place on 27 February. UKOTA is the umbrella organisation which groups together the different inhabited UK Overseas Territories.

The Summit will be chaired by a delegate from the British Virgin Islands, which currently holds the rotating chair of UKOTA. It will see young people from the different territories contribute to the discussions on the theme of “Diversity and Inclusion”.

The selection process followed an essay competition on the same subject, where essays written by Francis Devincenzi and Johan Perez were chosen as the winning entries. They will be the official Gibraltar delegates to the UKOTA Summit. This competition was judged by retired headteachers Mr Albert Danino and Mr Ivan Navas.

The second youth event which takes place in London the next day, 28 February, is the UK Youth Parliament. This will include a session where representatives from the UK Overseas Territories will be invited to address their peers from the despatch box of the House of Commons. The selection process also followed an essay competition which was judged by young people from the Commonwealth Youth Association. The successful entry was written by James Vinet, who will represent Gibraltar at this event.

The theme for this essay competition and for the UK Youth Parliament session is “Education and Learning: School/College and Access to University and Apprenticeships”.

The Government would like to thank all those young people who took part, and in particular the judges who selected the winning entries, for giving so generously of their time. It is worth highlighting that the judges were very impressed with the high standard of the entries submitted by those who took part.