ABSTRACT
As another chapter addresses the dispute settlement system of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), I will now concentrate on the position of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) within that system and highlight the contributions this Tribunal has already made to the interpretation of the Convention and to the law of the sea in general. 1 Let me, nevertheless, recall that the negotiators at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, to which I had the privilege of belonging, strongly believed that compulsory third-party dispute settlement should be an essential feature of the new Convention. 2 This was obviously motivated by the wish to safeguard the many delicate compromises and to secure, as far as possible, a uniform interpretation and application of this instrument. 3 The newly created International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea constitutes an essential feature of the dispute settlement system, although, as you are aware, it is only one of four means under UNCLOS for the settlement of disputes entailing binding decisions. The term ‘Tribunal’, which may lead to some confusion in particular with respect to ad hoc tribunals, was used in order to distinguish this new institution from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In choosing the method to resolve a dispute States parties are accorded a great deal of flexibility as otherwise consensus on enshrining compulsory dispute settlement in the Convention could not have been achieved. 4
