Press Release: June, 2014
The Malta Maritime Law Association is very happy to announce that its President, Dr. Ann Fenech has been elected as one of eight Councillors on the Executive Council of the Comité Maritime International (CMI) by the Assembly of CMI held in Hamburg held yesterday. Dr. Fenech is the first Maltese person to occupy such a post.
As you are fully aware, CMI is a non-governmental international organization established in Antwerp in 1897, with the object of contributing by all appropriate means and activities to the unification of maritime law. Its members are the National Maritime Law Associations and the Malta Maritime Law Association is a very active member of CMI.
CMI has since its inception been tasked with the drafting of some of the most important International Maritime Conventions on a variety of maritime issues including limitation of liability, carriage of goods (the Hague and the Hague Visby Rules, Hamburg Rules, and Rotterdam Rules), arrest of ships, carriage of passengers, civil liability for oil pollution damage, salvage, carriage of hazardous and noxious substances etc.
Meanwhile work has continued – primarily with IMO – on a number of highly important issues including Places of Refuge for vessels in distress, Fair Treatment of Seafarers, and Guidelines for National Legislation on Piracy and serious Maritime Crime. Yesterday the Assembly also approved a Resolution approving the text of the Draft International Convention on Foreign Judicial Sales of Ships and their Recognition.
The Maltese Maritime Law Association has been extremely active through a sub committee set up on purpose and has made a number of very valid contributions to the drafting which have been adopted at the Beijing conference, the Dublin Conference and in the final draft approved yesterday at Hamburg. The MMLA was represented in Hamburg by our President Dr. Ann Fenech, Treasurer Dr. Nicky Valenzia and member Dr. Adrian Attard.
The Comité was one of the first non-governmental international organisations to be granted consultative status by the IMO (which is itself a Consultative Member of the Comité) and the CMI remains in continual contact with all other recognised international organisations concerned in any way with maritime law.
To facilitate its increasing work with subsidiary bodies of the United Nations such as UNCTAD, UNCITRAL and the Office for the Law of the Sea, the CMI has in 1997 been granted consultative status with the UN. The Comité Maritime International also has the CMI Charitable Trust which was set up in 1985 which administers funds used for the advancement of legal education for the public benefit and the advancement and promotion of research and study in the fields of comparative law and international marine and commercial law and the publication of the results of such research.
The trust assists with the financing of visiting CMI lecturers to the International Maritime Law Institute (IMLI) in Malta and finances the CMI Prize for the best overall student at IMLI. Last year the prize for the best overall student was won by Dr. Denise Micallef.
Dr. Fenech was also appointed as one of the 7 trustees making up the Board of Trustees of the CMI Charitable Trust.
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