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Judge Kriangsak Kittichaisaree

Member of the Tribunal since 1 October 2017; President of the Chamber for Fisheries Disputes since October 2023

Born: Nan, Thailand, 2 February 1958.

Education: Ph.D., Cambridge University (1986).

Professional experience as a diplomatic lawyer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Thailand (Oct. 1986-Sept. 2017): Chief Legal Counsel in maritime delimitation negotiations (1986-2017); Director of the Division of Legal Affairs (1999-2002) and Deputy Director-General (2002-2004) of the Department of Treaties and Legal Affairs; Ambassador responsible for international legal issues and counter-international terrorism (2004-2006); Director-General of the Department of International Organizations (2006-2007); Ambassador to Iran (2007-2010), Australia (and concurrently Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu) (2010-2012), Russian Federation (and concurrently Armenia, Belarus, Moldova and Uzbekistan) (2015-2017); delegate and subsequently head of delegation, Preparatory Commission for the International Sea-Bed Authority and for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, 5th to 9th sessions (1987-1991); adviser, land boundary negotiations with Malaysia, Burma (Myanmar) and Laos (1987-1994); delegate, fisheries negotiations with Malaysia (1988-1993); delegate, fisheries co-operation negotiation with Vietnam (1991); delegate, UN Environment Programme’s Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt a Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment From Land-Based Activities, Washington, DC (1995); head of delegation, Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court (2000, 2001); head of delegation, 40th Session, Asian-African Legal Consultative Organization, New Delhi (2001); alternate representative, UN General Assembly (2001, 2007); head of delegation, UN Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea, New York (2001, 2011, 2013); eminent adviser, Constitutional Court of Thailand (2006); alternative representative, Steering Committee of the Four Nations (Chile, South Africa, Sweden and Thailand) Initiative on Governance and Management of the UN Secretariat (2006-2008); represented Thailand in Case No. 21 before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea; representative, UN General Assembly (2006-2016); Executive Director of the Thailand Trade & Economic Office (2012-2015); delegate, meetings of the Ad Hoc Open-Ended Working Group to study issues relating to conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction (2014-2015); delegate, Preparatory Commission on the development of an international legally binding instrument under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on BBNJ (2016-2017).

Intergovernmental Positions: Expert, special arbitration under Article 2, Annex VIII, of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (2000-2014); Conciliator under Annex V to the Convention (July 2017–present); Arbitrator under Annex VII to the Convention (July 2017–present); Chairman of the Group of 77 of the Whole, 9th Session, Preparatory Commission for the International Sea-Bed Authority and for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (1991); Chairman, Working Group on the Administration of Justice at the United Nations, Sixth Committee, UN General Assembly (2011); President, 25th Meeting of States Parties to the Convention (2015-2016); member of the United Nations International Law Commission (2012-2016), responsible for the topic “Obligation to extradite or prosecute (aut dedere aut judicare)”; member, Eminent Persons Group of the Asian-African Legal Consultative Organization (2012-present); member, UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission’s Advisory Body of Experts on the Law of the Sea (1999-2004); member, Regional Network on the Legal Aspects of Marine Pollution under the UNDP/IMO Programme for the Prevention and Management of Marine Pollution in the East Asian Seas (1995-2010).

Academic Activities: Visiting Professor, University of New South Wales School of Law, Sydney (1999-2008); Visiting Professor, Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law, Duke University School of Law (2000 and 2004); Distinguished Visitor (equivalent to a visiting professor), National University of Singapore Faculty of Law (2006, 2009); Visiting Research Consultant, Centre for International Law/National University of Singapore (April 2018-March 2019); Visiting Research Fellow of the University of Oxford's Mansfield College and Bonavero Institute of Human Rights (Hilary & Trinity Terms 2018); Presiding Judge of the world grand finale round of the Price Media Law Moot Court Competition 2018; Judge of the Grand Finals of the Sino International Law of the Sea Moot Court Competition (Beijing in  2018 and Wuhan in 2019); Teaching “International Law and Politics of Human Rights”, Albrecht Mendelsohn Batholdy Graduate School of Law, University of Hamburg, Feb. 2019; Judge of the Grand Final of the German National Round of the Philip C Jessup International Law Moot Competition 2019 and of the German National Round of the same in 2022; Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) International Maritime Law Institute (IMLI) (since October 2019); Lecture at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, on “International Law in Asia and the Pacific” as part of the regional course in international law for Asia and the Pacific, organized by the Codification Division of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand, December 2019; Guest Lecturer, LLM in International Law of the Sea module, University of Essex and at the Centre for International Law/National University of Singapore (2021); dissertation marker, Diplomatic Studies Programme, University of Oxford 2021; Member of the International Advisory Panel, Centre for International Law/National University of Singapore (since April 2022); Lecture on the law of the sea at the China Foreign Affairs University (2022); regular keynote speaker/panellist on the law of the sea at international conferences held in Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the UK, among others; Chairman, Foundation for the Development of International Law in Asia (1999-2006); Member,  Editorial Board of the Asian Yearbook of International Law (1999-2006); Member, Advisory Panel (International), Indian Journal of International Law (2005-2012); Member, Advisory Board, Thailand Journal of International Law (2015-present) and that of the Journal of International Criminal Law (since December 2019).

Publications: Published widely in the field of the law of the sea and other fields of international law, including: 

Books— The Law of the Sea and Maritime Boundary Delimitation in South-East Asia, Oxford UP, 1987; Regional Co-operation on the Law of the Sea: ASEAN and the EC Perspectives (ed.), International Studies Centre, Institute of Foreign Affairs, Bangkok, 1988; Deep Seabed Mining and Its Reflections on Contemporary International Law, International Studies Centre, Institute of Foreign Affairs, Bangkok, 1989; Research Report to Thailand’s Law Reform Committee on Development of The Legislation on the Continental Shelf and the Exclusive Economic Zone (in Thai), Bangkok, 1995; International Criminal Law, Oxford UP, 2001; Public International Law of Cyberspace, Springer, 2017 (also translated into Chinese); Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations, Cambridge UP, 2017 (joint authorship); The Obligation to Extradite or Prosecute, Oxford UP, 2018; International Human Rights Law and Diplomacy, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020 (also translated into Farsi); The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Oxford UP, 2021; The Rohingya, Justice and International Law, Routledge, 2021;  and Judicial Responsibility and Coups d’État: Judging against Unconstitutional Usurpation of Power, Routledge, Feb. 2023.

Articles— “Development of ocean law and policy and management in Thailand”, Marine Policy 315, 1990; “Marine Resources Management”, 8 Foreign Relations Journal 83, Philippine Council for Foreign Relations, 1993; “Using Trade Sanctions and Subsidies to Achieve Environmental Objectives in the Pacific Rim”, 4 Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy 296, 1993; “Effectuation of international law in the municipal legal order of Thailand”, 4 Asian Yearbook of International Law, 1994; “Trade And The Environment In Pacific Rim Nations”, American Bar Association, Standing Committee on Environmental Law, Washington, DC, 1994;  “The NATO Military Action and the Potential Impact of the International Criminal Court”, 4 Singapore Journal of International and Comparative Law, 2000; “A Code of Conduct for Human and Regional Security around the South China Sea”, 32 Ocean Development & International Law 131, 2001; “Juridicalization of the Sea: A Judge’s View”, 115 American Journal of International Law Unbound 378, 2021.

Book chapters—“Practical Difficulties for the International Criminal Court to Overcome”, in: Proceedings of the 6th Annual Conference of the Australia-New Zealand Society of International Law, Canberra: Australian National University, June 1998; “International Legal Order in a Changing World”, in Proceedings of the International Law Association-Australia/New Zealand Society of International Law Conference: Wellington, July 1999;  “International Criminal Law”, in the Diplomatic Training Programme Manual, University of New South Wales, Feb. 2002; “A century of challenges for international law”, Brazilian Society of International Law Bulletin – Centenary Edition, December 2017;  “International Humanitarian Law and the Asia-Pacific struggles for national liberation” in Asia-Pacific Perspectives on International Humanitarian Law (eds. Suzannah Linton, Tim McCormack and Sandesh Sivakumaran), Cambridge University Press, 2019, chapter 10; “The Law of the Sea and a Holistic Approach to Combating IUU Fishing” in Law of the Sea and Transdisciplinarity Vol. II, Wagner Menezes, Paulo Henrique Reis de Oliveira and Bárbara Mourão Sachett (eds), Arraes Editores, 2021; ‘The Role of Negotiations and Diplomacy in Encouraging State Implementation of Human Rights’ in Research Handbook on Implementation of Human Rights in Practice (eds. Rachel Murray and Debra Long), Edward Elgar Publishing 2022, chapter 13. “UNCLOS settlement of dispute mechanisms” in Nguyen Hong Thao and Vu Hai Dang (eds.), Asia and UNCLOS 30 Years’ Implementation: An Assessment, Springer, 2024; and “UNCLOS Dispute Settlement Mechanism” in Anna Petrig and Irini Papanicolopulu (eds.), Handbook on Human Rights at Sea, Oxford UP, 2026.