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Prestige lecture by Prof Dire Tladi
14 April 2014

On Monday, 14 April 2014, Prof Dire Tladi was formally welcomed by the Faculty of Law of the University of Pretoria through his prestige lecture on ‘The development of the law of the sea through UN processes: The case of biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction’.

Prof Tladi’s lecture focused on the legal regime applicable to marine genetic resources on the deep seabed and on the legal rules relevant to measures for the conservation and preservation of the marine environment in areas beyond national jurisdiction.

Prof Tladi holds BLC and LLB degrees from the University of Pretoria, an LLM from the University of Connecticut and a PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He has published widely in International Law.

He is a Professor of International Law at the University of Pretoria and a member of the UN International Law Commission.

He was formerly an Associate Professor and Head of Constitutional, International and Indigenous Law at UNISA (2002 to 2006), and senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria (1998 to 2002). Between March 2006 and March 2014, he held the position of Principal State Law Adviser (IL) at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa. In that capacity he was posted to serve as the Legal Counsellor of the South African Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York from 2009 to 2013. During his tenure at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation he held the position of Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch.

Prof Tladi joined the University of Pretoria as Professor of International Law in the Faculty of Law on 1 March 2014.