The United Nations has announced the full list of nominees to the International Law Commission for 2017 to 2021, with several prominent international arbitration practitioners among them.

The election of the 34-strong body will take place in November 2016, with votes cast by members of the UN General Assembly. Thirty-four members will be picked, including eight nationals from African states, seven nationals from Asia-Pacific states, four nationals from Eastern European states, seven nationals from Latin American and Caribbean states and eight nationals from Western European and other states.

All those elected will serve a five-year term, starting in 2017.

Among the 50 nominees are a number of figures known to the international arbitration community, including (…) Marcelo Gustavo Kohen.

Nominated by Argentina and Switzerland, Marcelo Kohen, is a native of Argentina and professor of international law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Kohen has acted in several inter-state cases, including an International Court of Justice dispute between Colombia and Nicaragua over an area of the Caribbean Sea and an arbitration between Argentina and Ghana over the West African state’s detention of an Argentine frigate, governed by the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.

Marcelo Kohen is currently the state-appointed arbitrator on an investment treaty tribunal hearing a claim brought by mobile phone company Orange against Jordan over alleged arbitrariness in awarding 3G licences, alongside New Zealand arbitrator Campbell McLachlan and Canadian arbitrator Yves Fortier QC.

Full Article by Alison Ross, Global Arbitration Review, 8 juillet 2016.