Researchers' Activities

The Centre for International Law successfully organised the second CIL-ANCORS Workshop on the Negotiation of Maritime Boundaries on 3 to 5 July 2018. The workshop was held in coordination with the Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum. The workshop combined interactive lectures and supervised practical exercises, in which participants negotiated a maritime boundary between two fictitious states.

Thirty-four participants, including government officials, geographers, academics and practitioners, completed the three-day training led by renowned legal and technical experts in the negotiation of maritime boundaries.

For more information on the event, please click here.

CIL Research Associate Millicent McCreath attended the conference ‘New Knowledge and Changing Circumstances in the Law of the Sea’, which was organised by the Law of the Sea Institute of Iceland and Korea Maritime Institute. The conference was held in Reykjavik from 28 to 30 June 2018. The main themes of the conference were biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, the continental shelf regime, deep seabed mineral resources, dispute settlement in the law of the sea, climate change and the legal effects of sea level rise, and the Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement. Approximately 130 participants from all over the world attended the conference.

Associate Professor Robert Beckman and Visiting Senior Principal Research Fellow Captain Ashley Roach participated in the 42nd Annual Conference of the Center for Oceans Law and Policy of the University of Virginia, which was held in Beijing on 24–25 May 2018. The title of the conference was ‘Cooperation and Engagement in the Asia Pacific Region’. Captain Roach gave a presentation on the BBNJ Discussions, and Assoc Prof Beckman gave a presentation on ‘The Legal Regime Governing Passage on Routes Used for International Navigation through Indonesian Waters’. To see Assoc Prof Beckman’s PowerPoint presentation, click here.

Associate Professor Robert Beckman participated in 2018 Global Ocean Regime Conference organised by the Korea Maritime Institute at the Hyatt Regency, Jeju Island, Korea, from 16 to 18 May 2018. The title of the conference was ‘Promoting Cooperation in Overlapping Maritime Areas’. Assoc Prof Beckman gave a presentation on ‘Joint Arrangements in the South China Sea: Problems and Prospects’. To see his presentation, click here.

At the 2nd Conference on Maritime Security and Coastal Surveillance Indonesia in Jakarta, Dr Zhen Sun spoke on ‘Fostering More Effective Non-Traditional Maritime Security Cooperation in Southeast Asia’ to an audience consisting of government officials, industry representatives, academics and members of other private sectors.

Dr Sun said that as non-traditional maritime security threats (eg, trafficking of drugs and humans, piracy and armed robbery against ships, etc) pose challenges to all Southeast Asian countries, coordinated efforts are required from various sectors on the national, regional and international levels. To use legal tools to address these threats, Southeast Asian countries will need to ratify and implement relevant international agreements. 

Click here to learn more about Dr Sun’s presentation.

Members of the CIL Ocean Law and Policy Programme participated in a workshop organised by INTERPOL on 17 April in Singapore entitled ‘Operation 30 Days at Sea: Asia Pacific Operational Planning Meeting’. The workshop was held as part of a year-long global project to enforce the international rules regulating marine pollution from ships. Associate Professor Beckman gave a presentation on ‘The Global Legal Regime Governing Ship-Source Pollution’. Research Fellow Dr Zhen Sun and Research Associate Ms Millicent McCreath also participated in the workshop, along with representatives from governments throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

Research Associate Ms Melissa Loja presented her research paper at the New Voices Panel at the 112th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law in Washington DC. Ms Loja’s paper was about international agreements between non-state actors. Her paper discussed international agreements that national petroleum corporations such as Petronas, PetroVietnam, PetroleumBrunei and China National Offshore Oil Corporations enter into to manage disputes over petroleum resources that are shared by states across maritime zones and boundaries.

Professor Laurence Helfer, Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law, remarked that her paper makes a concrete contribution to international law, because it presents primary data that have not been made known before, and it enables a granular examination of actual practices in international law.

CIL and the K.G. Jebsen Centre for the Law of the Sea (JCLOS), UiT The Arctic University of Norway held a side event at Arctic Frontiers 2018 in Tromsø, Norway on 24 January 2018 to launch the book entitled Governance of Arctic Shipping: Balancing Rights and Interests of Arctic States and User States. The book was a collaborative effort of CIL and JCLOS. The book sets out the legal framework that governs Arctic shipping, giving specific consideration to the roles of the International Maritime Organization and the Arctic Council, and compares the rights, interests, positions and practice of Arctic coastal states with those of user states, with particular emphasis on China, Japan and South Korea.

At the side event of Arctic Frontiers 2018, Associate Professor Robert C Beckman, CIL’s Head of Ocean Law Policy and Programme, presented a lecture on ‘The Cooperative Mechanism in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore: A Model for the Arctic?’.

Three members of the CIL Ocean Law and Policy team—Head of Programme Associate Professor Robert Beckman, Dr Zhen Sun and Ms Millicent McCreath—attended the 2018 Arctic Frontiers Conference in Tromso, Norway from 21 to 25 January 2018. The CIL team met with staff and students from the Jebsen Centre for Law of the Sea at the University of Tromso (UiT), and Assoc Prof Beckman gave a guest lecture at the UiT. The book Governance of Arctic Shipping was officially launched at a side event at the conference, and Assoc Prof Beckman, one of the book editors, spoke at the book launch. The book was edited by staff from UiT and CIL and was published by Brill. The CIL team also stopped in Oslo to visit the Scandinavian Institute for Maritime Law, where Assoc Prof Beckman gave a guest lecture to graduate students and faculty members at the University of Oslo law school.

Head of CIL Oceans Law and Policy Programme Associate Professor Robert Beckman participated in the 9th South China Sea Conference organised by the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam on 27–28 November 2017 in Ho Chi Minh City. The title of the conference was ‘Cooperation for Regional Security and Development’. Assoc Prof Beckman made a presentation to lead the panel discussion in the final session on the code of conduct for the South China Sea. He also chaired the session on Legal Dimensions in the South China Sea.