ANCORS Fellow

William Edeson
Professorial Fellow

William Edeson has been a Professorial Fellow since September 2003. From 1988 until 2003, William Edeson was Senior Legal Officer, Legal Office FAO Rome, where he worked, inter alia, on the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, and the International Plan of Action to Prevent Deter, and Eliminate Illegal Unreported and Unregulated Fishing. Prior to that, he was Reader in Law ANU Law Faculty Canberra (1975 to 1988), where he taught Law of the Sea, International Organizations Law, Administrative law and Principles of Constitutional Law. In 1980, he was the Regional Fisheries Law Adviser, Caribbean region, FAO. His principal task was to assist the small island States of the Caribbean in the preparation of fisheries legislation to give effect to the Law of the Sea Convention.

He was also acted as legal adviser to several bodies at FAO, in particular, COFI (Committee on Fisheries), the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean , and the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission. He has worked on fisheries legislation in a number of different countries (mainly, Bangladesh, St Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Tonga, Samoa, Malaysia, Cook Islands, Guyana, Papua New Guinea, Republic of South Africa, Namibia, Vietnam, and a draft regional law for the island States of the Caribbean on the implementation of the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement and the FAO Compliance Agreement) and with some regional fisheries bodies outside the FAO context.

He has written extensively on fisheries law issues.