CIL Director Nilüfer Oral spoke on ‘International Law and IUU Fishing’ at a webinar on ‘Fishing on the High Seas and Marine Protected Areas’ on 13 October 2020. The webinar was organised by the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, in partnership with the Inter-American Institute on Justice and Sustainability. Globally renowned experts at this webinar provide perspectives on cooperation and legal responses for enforcement of international marine protection in exclusive economic zones.

The challenges of international illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing on the high seas is one of the most urgent issues for the global community seeking to protect marine reserves and the integrity of exclusive economic zones. IUU fleets that cross protected boundaries create problems for environmental security, international governance, and the livelihoods of local communities that depend on their marine resources.

On 9 October 2020 CIL Director Nilüfer Oral spoke at an online conference, UN at 75: Effective Multilateralism and International Law, which was jointly organised by the Office of Legal Affairs of the United Nations and the German Federal Foreign Office. The conference examines the evolution of international law since the UN’s establishment in 1945, the achievements of the UN in advancing international law, and its future in supporting multilateralism.

Dr Oral presented on ‘United Nations in International Law at 75: The Role of the General Assembly and Its Subsidiary Organs (ILC, Sixth Committee) and the Importance of Academia’.

At the online UN side event The Role of the Ocean in Climate Change and Sea Level Rise on 8 October 2020, CIL Director Nilüfer Oral spoke on ‘Ocean Acidification: A Conundrum for International Law?’ The event was organised by NGO Sustainability Inc and co-hosted by the UN Permanent Missions of Kenya, Portugal and Sri Lanka, the UN Division of Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, and UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

On 1 October 2020, CIL Director Nilüfer Oral delivered an online lecture on sea-level rise and the law of the sea at the annual ITLOS-Nippon Capacity-Building and Training Programme. The programme helped participants, who were junior to mid-level government officials and researchers from mainly developing countries, to develop their legal skills and deepen their practical knowledge of dispute settlement in the law of the sea under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

CIL Director Nilüfer Oral was a panellist at the webinar ‘Galapagos at Risk: International Marine Protection, Challenges and Legal Options’ on 17 September 2020. The webinar was organised by the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, in partnership with the Inter-American Institute on Justice and Sustainability. Globally renowned experts at this webinar provided perspectives on cooperation and legal responses for enforcement of international marine protection in exclusive economic zones.

CIL Director Nilüfer Oral presented a paper titled ‘First Issues Paper on Sea Level Rise in Relation to International Law: Key Issues and Gaps’ at the UN Diplomacy Clinic organised by New York University’s Law Faculty on 10 September 2020. Dr Oral is the Co-Chair of the International Law Commission’s Study Group on Sea Level Rise in Relation to International Law.

At the online regional conference on Securing the Limits of the Blue Pacific organised by Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) on 9–11 September 2020, CIL Director Nilüfer Oral presented a paper titled ‘Legal Options and Institutional Responses to the Impacts of Sea Level Rise on Maritime Zones in the Context of International Law’.

In her presentation, Dr Oral spoke of a platform that will allow PIF members to examine the leaders’ commitment to preserving members’ existing rights stemming from maritime zones in the face of sea level rise. The conference outcomes will form the basis of recommendations to leaders on various legal options and institutional responses, to guide the region towards a collective effort to securing the Blue Pacific.

On 13 February 2019, Director Lucy Reed participated in the conference on ‘ISDS Reform: Mapping the Way Forward’ organised by the Asian Academy of International Law (AAIL) and the Hong Kong SAR Department of Justice. The welcoming speakers included Ms Teresa Cheng GBS SC JP, the Hong Kong SAR Secretary for Justice. The conference featured four panels—Investment Mediation, Appeal Mechanism for ISDS Awards, Third Party Funding in ISDS and Appointment of Arbitrators—and an Oxford Union style Debate on whether a Permanent Investment Court is a possible solution to ISDS problems. In an innovative approach, each panel had the benefit of a detailed discussion paper by a young private or government practitioner.

Professor Reed spoke on the Investment Mediation panel, on the topic of how to incentivise host governments and investors to use investor-State mediation. Also on the panel were (as pictured) Dr Anthony Neoh (AAIL Chairman), Professor Jack Coe from Pepperdine Law School and Paul Starr from King & Wood Mallesons. The discussion paper was from David Ng of the Hong Kong SAR Department of Justice.

On 18 January, Director Lucy Reed delivered the keynote address at the inaugural Schiefelbein Global Dispute Resolution Conference at the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law at Arizona State University. Mr Lester Schiefelbein, the former Vice-President of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and CEO of the Silicon Valley Arbitration & Mediation Center, and his family have endowed this new Global Dispute Resolution Program for annual conferences and scholarships.

The title of Professor Reed’s address was ‘Ultima Thule: Prospects for International Commercial Mediation’, connecting the topic to Ultima Thule, the 4.5 billion-year-old rock newly discovered in outer-outer space and photographed by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. Pending formal posting on the Shiefelbein Dispute Resolution Program website, a working copy of the address can be downloaded here.

The conference included panels on ‘Technology in Arbitration and Arbitration in Technology’, ‘China’s Belt and Road: Impressive Scale and Unprecedented Risk’ and ‘Atmospheric Arbitration: Resolving Climate Change Related Disputes’, as well as a roundtable with corporate counsel from Baker Hughes/GE Oil & Gas, Raytheon Missile Systems, Avent Inc and the American Arbitration Association. It was a global event, featuring speakers from Washington DC, San Francisco, New York, Phoenix, Houston, Tucson, London, Shenzen, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, The Hague and Mexico City.

The conference was organised by Mr Lester Schiefelbein and Professors Victoria Sahani and Art Hinshaw of the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law, pictured here with Professor Reed.

CIL Director Lucy Reed delivered a keynote address on 15 September 2018 at the Conference in Commemoration of Professor David D Caron held at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley. At the time of his tragic, premature death in February 2018, Professor Caron was sitting as a judge on the Iran-US Claims Tribunal, an ad hoc judge in two ICJ cases, and an arbitrator in several complex international arbitrations. He was formerly Dean of the Dickson Poon School of Law at Kings College London and a chaired professor of law at Berkeley. Professors Reed and Caron, who were friends for some 35 years, had both served as President of the American Society of International Law and Chair of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration.

The conference, entitled ‘The Elegance of International Law’, featured high-level panels focussed on Professor Caron’s main areas of interest: international dispute resolution, legitimacy of international law and institutions, and the law of the sea and international environmental law. In her keynote—‘The David Caron Rule of X’—Professor Reed described and developed a lecture Professor Caron gave at the opening of the year in September 2017 at MIDS (Masters in International Dispute Resolution) at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. This was a work in progress, in which Professor Caron focussed on the need for international arbitrators to exercise personal discipline to limit their caseloads to the number of arbitrations they can responsibly handle—namely, a personal ‘X’ number of arbitrations—and thereby facilitate the process of more appointments for a more diverse pool of arbitrators.

The conference papers will be published by the Berkeley Journal of International Law and the Ecology Law Quarterly.