Call for Applications: The Hague Academy's Seminar for Advanced Studies

The Hague Academy of International Law is now accepting applications for the seventh session of the Seminar for Advanced Studies, which is to take place January 16-22, 2011. This year's subject is "Security in the International Law of the Sea." The program is available here. The closing date for applications is August 31, 2010. Here's the idea:

The theme of the 7th session of the Seminar for Advanced Studies in Public and Private International Law is Security in the International Law of the Sea.

The public and private international law of the sea is assuming a new prominence in international affairs. It raises new challenges ranging from questions of environmental protection and offshore resource exploitation, to legal contests over arctic resources and global-warming opened sea passages, and regarding the risks of piracy, maritime terrorism, human trafficking and smuggling of weapons of mass destruction. Besides substantive challenges of this kind, international law of the sea is also encountering background difficulties well-known to other regimes of international law, and in particular those pertaining to the fragmentation of international and regional legal regimes, to enforcement difficulties at domestic and international level and to the proliferation of dispute settlement mechanisms. Held one year before the 2012 celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and two years after the adoption of the "Rotterdam Rules", the seminar provides a unique opportunity to look back over thirty years of practice and to both identify unresolved issues of contention and potential solutions and articulate reform proposals.

The seminar aims to provide participants with up-to-date and advanced knowledge of the guarantees and mechanisms of implementation of international law of the sea by focusing on one central question to most areas of contention in the field: the issue of security and the challenges it creates for practitioners. After an introduction to the main challenges currently faced by international lawyers of the sea, the teaching programme is divided into two complementary sections: the first one is devoted to the question of security at sea in public international law, while the second broaches further dimensions of the topic under private international law and maritime law. Among the public and private international law dimensions of the question of the security at sea that will be addressed are: access to living and non-living ocean resources in the outer continental shelf and the deep seabed; navigation and passage rights in international straits and high seas; protection of the marine environment; protection against violence at sea and law enforcement; protection of seafarers' rights and safety; sea carriers' security obligations and contractual liability regime. A third and final section of the seminar will be dedicated to the security at sea in the Arctic; this will provide a concrete situation regarding which participants will be able to address the different issues of public and private law of the sea discussed during the week in an applied and holistic fashion.

The seminar is aimed chiefly at practitioners (prosecutors, judges, national and international legal officers, attorneys at law, diplomats, etc.) working in the field of international law of the sea and who need an intensive training or a brush-up in its public and private international law aspects. The seminar adopts a practice-oriented approach and is based on the extensive experience of renowned practitioners and the expertise of leading international academics in the field.