International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
Country Name Inauguration Until
Lebanon Joseph Akl 1996 2017
United Kingdom David Heywood Anderson 1996 2005
Trinidad and Tobago Lennox Fitzroy Ballah 2002 2003
Cameroon Paul Bamela Engo 1996 2008
Argentina Hugo Caminos 1996 2011
Brazil Antonio Cachapuz de Medeiros 2016 2016
India P. Chandrasekhara Rao 1996 2017
Iceland Gudmundur Eiriksson 1996 2002
Russia Vladimir Vladimirovich Golitsyn 2008 2017
Russia Anatoly Lazarevich Kolodkin 1996 2008
Belize Edward Arthur Laing 1996 2001
Brazil Vicente Marotta Rangel 1996 2015
Bulgaria Alexander Yankov 1996 2011
China Guangjian Xu 2001 2007
China Lihai Zhao 1996 2000
Croatia Budislav Vukas 1996 2005
Ghana Thomas A. Mensah 1996 2005
Italy Tullio Treves 1996 2011
Japan Soji Yamamoto 1996 2005
South Korea Choon-Ho Park 1996 2008
Former judges
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 ITLOS is one of four dispute resolution mechanisms listed at Article 287 of the UNCLOS. 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, that is beyond the limits of the territorial sea, the contiguous zone and the continental shelf. There are currently 168 signatories, 167 states plus the European Union. As of 2012, holdouts included the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.