CIL at the 2025 Rhodes Academy of Oceans Law and Policy

CIL actively participated in the 28^th Annual Rhodes Academy of Oceans Law and Policy, which was held on Greek island of Rhodes from 22 June to 11 July 2025.

The Rhodes Academy is a three-week course on the principles of ocean law taught by law and policy experts from around the world, including academics, judges, government officials and private practitioners. The 19 faculty members at this year’s Academy included Judge Tomas Heidar of Iceland, the current President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) as well as two former Presidents of ITLOS – Rüdiger Wolfrum of Germany and Albert Hoffman of South Africa. In addition, the faculty also included one current ITLOS judge (Judge MT Infante of Chile) two former ITLOS Judges (Jin-Hyun Paik of Republic of Korea and Tulio Treves of Italy).

The 46 participants at the 25^th Rhodes Academy included government officials, academics and PhD students from Europe, Asia, Africa and the United States. The government officers from ASEAN member States included two from Singapore, five from the Philippines and one from Thailand.

CIL sponsored the participation of two of its research associates (Digvijay Sanjay Rewatkar and Eduardo Cavalcanti de Mello Filho) as well as a researcher from the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea (Maria Isabel Canaveral) and a marine scientist from Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (Dr. Khaira Ismail).

The NUS Centre for International Law played a major role in Week 3 of the 2025 Academy. Prof. Robert Beckman gave two lectures on the International Regulation of Shipping and the Law of the Sea.  Amb. Rena Lee, Singapore’s Ambassador for the Oceans, made a presentation on her role as the President of the UN Conference that negotiated the 2023 Agreement on Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (2023 BBNJ Agreement).

CIL also organized a workshop in Week 3 on the prospects for the establishment of Area-Based Management Tools (ABMTs) in the Sargasso Sea. The Workshop began with a presentation by David Freestone, the Executive Secretary of the Sargasso See Commission. The faculty members commenting on the presentations of the workshop participants were David Freestone, Rena Lee, Judge Wolfrum and Prof. Beckman.

The Rhodes Academy is a cooperative undertaking by international law experts and sponsoring universities and institutions. The current Directors are John Norton Moore, Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia, USA); Tomas Heidar, Law of the Sea Institute of Iceland (Reykjavik, Iceland);  Nikos Skourtos, Aegean Institute of the Law of the Sea and Maritime Law (Rhodes, Greece); Rüdiger Wolfrum, Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law (Heidelberg, Germany); Robert Beckman, Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore (Singapore); and Alex Oude Elferink, Netherlands Institute for the Law of the Sea, Utrecht University (Utrecht, the Netherlands). The School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering at the University of New Hampshire (USA), the Korea Maritime Institute (Busan, Korea) and the Ankara University National Center for the Sea and Maritime Law (Ankara, Turkey) are associate sponsors of the Academy.