3. International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS)

Abstract

ITLOS is an autonomous specialized international judicial organ established pursuant the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It is composed of twenty-one independent judges elected by the meeting of states parties to the Convention, among specialists in the law of the sea, according to a method that intends to assure an equitable geographical representation. The composition of ITLOS is renewed by thirds every three years. According to this system, the election of seven members of the tribunal took place on 24–6 August during the first in-person meeting held in the General Assembly hall at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York since the lockdown in March. Two judges ending their respective mandates, Attard and Kulyk, were re-elected, and the remaining five (Brown, Caracciolo, Duan, Infante Caffi, and Kamga) were elected for the first time—all of them for a period of nine years. Due to the pandemic, the swearing-in ceremony for the five new judges was held on 1 October in a hybrid format, with four of them present in the courtroom and Judge Brown attending the event via video conference link from her home. Triennial elections also meant the reconstitution of the Chambers of ITLOS (Seabed Disputes Chamber, Chamber of Summary Procedure, Chamber of Maritime Delimitation Disputes, Chamber for Fisheries Disputes, and Chamber for Marine Environment Disputes) and the election of a new president, Hoffman, and vice president, Heidar, for a three-year period. Regretfully, former Judge Mensah, who was the inaugural president of ITLOS and served as a judge from 1996 to 2005, passed away in April. The COVID-19 pandemic also meant some changes in the rules of the tribunal—namely, to provide for hearings and meetings by video conference (video link) as an exceptional measure (Articles 41, 74, 112, 124, and 135).