Washington: July 9, 2016. (PCP) Dr. Ghulam N. Mir, President, World Kashmir Awareness announced that the panel of judges of the International Essay Contest namely, Ms. Victoria Schofield (Chair), Ms. Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal (member) and Mr. Zahid G. Muhammad (Member) declared the final results of the essay contest on Kashmir. The theme of the essay contest was "Do Kashmiris have a right to self-determination?” “We should congratulate the panel of judges for their scrupulous care, complete fairness and impartiality”, Dr. Mir said. He, however, added that due to circumstances beyond our control we were unable to announce the results until today. Dr. Mir explained that the Panel of Judges considered all perspectives and viewpoints, regardless of personal inclinations of the writers. There were 59 essays submitted in total. The contestants consisted of 43 males and 16 females. They came from various backgrounds including India, Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan, Azad Kashmir, Armenia, Kenya, Nigeria, Turkey, Bosnia Herzegovina, Tanzania, Albania, Ukraine, Ethiopia and United Arab Emirates. As announced earlier, top three winners will be awarded Rs. 20,000, 15,000 and 10,000, respectively for the first, second and the third place. Dr. Mir emphasized that winners of the contest had clearly addressed the theme as stated above, and that they constructively complemented their arguments through the usage of proper objective criteria in support of their positions. He reported that the Chairman of the Panel, Ms. Victoria Schofield, wrote while sending the final results to the WKA, “As time has moved on, I think you can release the following statement:” Results of the “World Kashmir Awareness” Essay Competition: Do Kashmiris have a right to self-determination? As Chairman of the panel of judges, I want to congratulate all entrants. To undertake any writing endeavour is always a learning process and if all entrants have learnt something about the Kashmir issue while researching their essays then that is for the good. I should particularly like to commend those from other countries who made the effort to understand the issue. Winner: Entrant 13: Meher Tandon and Alisha Mehra (India) Although a joint effort, they addressed the topic, the essay was well-written and sources were provided. Runners up: Entrant 40: Bhavna Thakur, (India) (+ for providing source material) Entrant 22. Fahad Shah, (Jammu & Kashmir) in terms of content and fluency. Entrant 25: Sneha Sankhla, (India) well-argued Commendations: Entrant 56: Shankash Pant (India) for providing a map (the only entrant to do so!) Entrant 57: Ogobolo Paul Agoda (Nigeria) for providing a detailed list of references which demonstrated the extent of his research. Entrant 26: Salman Zahur (Pakistan): despite being rather too polemical his essay was well-written and engaging. Several others were interesting and demonstrated a keen desire to address the issue/understand its complexities. Those who lost points did so because they did not address the topic of self-determination or define the subject matter. There were several entrants who repeated the same section verbatim which was evidence that their material was not original. Entrants who wrote in bullet points were also marked down as well as those who embedded links within the narrative instead of as footnotes. Victoria Schofield Author: Kashmir in the Crossfire, Kashmir in Conflict