CIL staff played a major role in the 26^th Annual Rhodes Academy of International Law, which was held at the Hotel Mediterranean on the Greek Island of Rhodes from 2 to 21 July 2023.

The 26^th Rhodes Academy was attended by 48 students from 29 countries from all regions of the world, including participants from four countries in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Singapore. CIL sponsored the participation of Taufik Rachmat Nugraha of Indonesia, who is currently an ASEAN Visiting Fellow at CIL.

The only Singaporean participant at the 26^th Academy, Amanda Chong from the Attorney-General’s Chambers, who did Singapore proud by receiving an award for being the top student in the written examination. The top student in the oral examination was Aliki Gkana from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Greece.

The Rhodes Academy is an intensive, three-week course of study, with lectures by more than 25 jurists, practitioners, and international law professors from around the world. In week 3 of the 26^th Academy the teaching staff included ITLOS President Albert Hoffman of South Africa, former ITLOS President Rudiger Wolfrum of Germany, ITLOS Judge Maria Teresa Infante Caffie of Peru, Prof Alina Miron of the University of Angers, Indonesian Ambassador to Germany H.E. Arif Havas Oegroseno, and three staff members of CIL.

CIL staff members played a prominent role in Week 3 of the programme. Dr Nilufer Oral delivered a special lecture “Sea Level Rise and the International Law Commission”. Robert Beckman delivered lectures on the “UNCLOS, the IMO and the Marine Environment” and on “The Evolution of Case Law on the Marine Environment”. Dr Youna Lyons delivered a lecture on “Carbon on Removal and the Protection of Carbon Sinks and Reservoirs” and headed a Workshop Session on “Carbon Capture Mitigation and Adaption. Finally, Prof Beckman served on a panel with Judge Hoffman in judging oral examination on the final day of the Academy.

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

The 26^th Rhodes Academy ended just before wild fires forced the evacuation of thousands of tourists from the beautiful island of Rhodes.