Tomas Heidar, President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), will give examples of the Tribunal’s contribution to the clarification and development of the law of the sea and related international law, focusing, in particular, on recent jurisprudence in Hamburg.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Judge Tomas Heidar
President, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea

Judge Tomas Heidar (Iceland) is President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). He has been Judge of the Tribunal since 2014 and was President of the ITLOS Chamber for Fisheries Disputes 2017-2020 and Vice-President of the Tribunal 2020-2023. He was a Member of the ITLOS Special Chamber in the Dispute concerning delimitation of the maritime boundary between Mauritius and Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

From 1996-2014, Judge Heidar served as Legal Adviser of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Iceland, attaining the rank of Ambassador. As such he was responsible for all matters of public international law and represented Iceland regularly at meetings on ocean affairs and the law of the sea at the United Nations and in other international fora.

Judge Heidar is also Director of the Law of the Sea Institute of Iceland and Co-director and lecturer of the Rhodes Academy of Oceans Law and Policy. He has lectured at the University of Iceland and many other universities and institutions around the world, including the University of Oxford, Queen Mary University of London, University College London, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, the IFLOS Summer Academy, the Yeosu Academy of the Law of the Sea and the Kadir Has International Law of the Sea Summer Academy. He has taught law of the sea at the United Nations Regional Course in International Law in Ethiopia.

Judge Heidar has published numerous books and articles on ocean affairs and the law of the sea, most recently New Knowledge and Changing Circumstances in the Law of the Sea (ed., Brill Nijhoff, 2020) and “The Contribution of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to the Protection of the Marine Environment” in the Korean Journal of International and Comparative Law (2021). He is also Conciliator and Arbitrator under Annexes V and VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Dr Nilüfer Oral is Director of the Centre for International Law. She is a member of the International Law Commission where she is co-chair of the study group on sea level rise in relation to international law. She is a member of the Curatorium of The Hague Academy of International Law. She has advised the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Turkey on matters related to the law of the sea and climate change, and served as a climate change negotiator. She has also appeared before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.