Practitioner's Guide to Maritime Boundary Delimitation

Stephen Fietta, Partner, Volterra Fietta,Robin Cleverly, Law of the Sea Consultant, UK Hydrographic Office

Stephen Fietta is a partner at Voterra Fietta, an international law firm based in London. He is one of the few practising lawyers globally whose practice focuses exclusively on public international law. A substantial part of Stephen's practice concerns the Law of the Sea. He advises sovereign States and corporate entities on all aspects of maritime delimitation. He was Counsel and Advocate for Barbados in the first ever maritime boundary delimitation arbitration proceeding under UNCLOS (against Trinidad and Tobago, decided in 2006). He has lectured at Kings College, London since 2006 on maritime delimitation law and practice on the MA course entitled Geopolitics, Territory and Security (formerly International Boundary Studies). He graduated in law from Jesus College, Cambridge in 1993.

Dr. Robin Cleverly is a Law of the Sea consultant at the UK Hydrographic Office, which he joined in 2003 after a long career as a petroleum exploration geologist in the oil industry. He graduated with an MA and DPhil in geology from St Catherine's College, Oxford. As part of his role at the UKHO, he provides technical advice to governments world-wide for the negotiation and delimitation of maritime boundaries, and also to oil majors and independents. He has worked extensively on international maritime boundary cases at both the International Court of Justice and other arbitrations: for Nigeria vs Cameroon, Barbados vs Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine vs Romania, Nicaragua vs Honduras, Chile vs Peru, Nicaragua vs Colombia (ICJ pending), and for Bangladesh vs Myanmar (ITLOS pending) and vs India (Annex VII tribunal pending). He is a member of the UK delegation for the UK's four outer continental shelf submissions to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.