In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Law of the Sea

12 Oct

[Miraj Hosen is a Research Assistant at the Bangladesh Society of International Law.] On 6 July 2026, Bangladesh deposited instruments of accession to three International Maritime Organization liability treaties. The instruments were the 1992 Protocol to the Civil Liability Convention, the 2001 Bunkers Convention, and the 2007 Nairobi Wreck Removal Convention. The latest IMO status record lists those deposits, while the...

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11 Oct

[Thea Coventry is a PhD candidate in international law and adjunct lecturer at Leiden University, specialising in maritime security, transnational criminal law and state jurisdiction.] Since 2025, the number of stateless and falsely flagged vessels transporting sanctioned Russian oil through the North and Baltic Seas has almost quadrupled. In June 2025, in response to this development, the Nordic-Baltic 8++ States announced...

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04 Sep

[Gustavo Leite Neves da Luz is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University. He holds a PhD in International Law from the University of Hamburg.] “Nobody—that’s my name,” Odysseus tells the Cyclops Polyphemus in Book IX of the Odyssey. The answer does not render him invisible. Polyphemus knows that an intruder stands before him and later knows that he has been blinded....

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03 Sep

[Tajra Smajic is a PhD candidate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, specializing in the governance of deep seabed mining.] On 18 July 2026, the Seabed Disputes Chamber (SDC) issued orders on requests for provisional measures in two parallel proceedings brought by Nauru Ocean Resources (NORI) (Case 34) and Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd (TOML) (Case 35). These are the first...

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26 Aug

[Francisco Javier Rozas Porras is a Spanish lawyer and PhD researcher in international law of the sea at the DEHUKAM Institute / Ankara University. He holds an LL.M. in Maritime Law from ICADE University in Madrid, Spain.] Introduction In 2026, Spain’s migration policy features a striking paradox. The Government has launched one of the most ambitious regularization processes in Europe on land,...

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22 Jun

The following post is based on a keynote lecture I delivered at the Global Sumud Flotilla conference. Uniquely, the conference took place at Muğla University the weekend the flotilla launched from Marmaris and was attended by a blend of activists and scholars, more activists than scholars admittedly. The context is relevant for the tone of my remarks. While the essence...

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15 May

[Dr Xudong Zhang is a lecturer at the School of Law, Shanghai Maritime University] From the South China Sea to the East China Sea, Asia's waters are witnessing an unprecedented intertwining of fisheries and geopolitics. When Chinese fishing vessels are detained by Japan's Fisheries Agency in waters off southwest Nagasaki prefecture, when the Korea Coast Guard uses force against Chinese fishing...

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06 May

[Himanil Raina is a final year PhD candidate and teaching assistant in the Department of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID). He completed his B.A. LL.B (Hons) from the NALSAR University of Law and is also an Honorary Adjunct Fellow at the National Maritime Foundation.] In mid-February, the frigate IRIS Dena (75), the oiler IRIS Bushehr (422) and the...

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06 May

[Konstantinos Deligiannis-Virvos is a PhD Research Fellow with the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea (NCLOS) at the Law Faculty of UiT-The Arctic University of Norway] The illegal armed attack against Iran by Israel and the US on February 28, 2026 prompted Iran to “close” the strait of Hormuz to international navigation. The attack against Iran clearly contravenes Art....

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14 Jan

[Davit Khachatryan is an international law expert and lecturer specializing in public international law, alternative dispute resolution, investment law, international humanitarian law, and security] A short video clip circulating online appears to show a US strike on a small vessel at sea, followed by imagery that has been read as suggesting that there were survivors in the water. The clip has...

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15 Dec

[Mr Mark Douglas is a Maritime Domain Analyst at Starboard Maritime Intelligence. He qualified as a Marine Engineer Officer while in the Royal New Zealand Navy. He later concurrently served as New Zealand Assistant Defence Advisor to Singapore and the New Zealand International Liaison Officer to the Singapore Information Fusion Centre. Dr Trung Nguyen is a Research Fellow at the Centre...

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14 Dec

[Jessica Dorsey is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Utrecht University School of Law, an Executive Board Member of Airwars, and the Managing Editor of Opinio Juris.] In a New York Times essay published last week, Jeh Johnson, General Counsel of the Department of Defense in President Barack Obama’s first term and Director of Homeland Security in his second, seeks...

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