Judge Jin-Hyun Paik, elected as President of the ITLOS


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 Last updated: 2017-10-10

Judge Jin-Hyun Paik has been elected as President of the ITLOS (International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea) for the 2017-2020 term.  Members of the Tribunal elected Judge Paik to this position on October 2, 2017.  President Paik has served as a member of the Tribunal since 2009.  In accordance with the rules of the Tribunal, the President is elected for a period of three years and may be re-elected.  As president, Judge Paik will preside at all meetings of the Tribunal, direct its work and supervise its administration.  He will represent the Tribunal in its relations with sovereign states and over entities and is required by the Statute of the Tribunal to reside permanently at the seat of the Tribunal in Hamburg.

The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) is an intergovernmental organization created by the mandate of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. It was established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, signed at Montego Bay, Jamaica, on December 10, 1982. The Convention entered into force on November 16, 1994, and established an international framework for law over "all ocean space, its uses and resources". The tribunal is based in Hamburg, Germany.

The Convention also established the International Seabed Authority, with responsibility for the regulation of seabed mining beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. There are currently 167 signatories, 166 states plus the European Union.  The Jurisdiction is composed of twenty one (21) judges, and seven (7) new judges are elected confidentially, every three (3) years.  Each judge has tenure of nine (9) years.