Virtual Voting in RFMOs: A Procedural Odyssey at the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission

This article examines, from the perspective of international institutional law, the variety of procedural problems which arose following an online vote by secret ballot taken by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (iotc) in 2021. By providing a detailed case-study of this novel instance of practice and the challenges it represents, this article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the institutional governance and procedural legal framework of regional fisheries management organizations (rfmo s). It first analyses the vote and the challenge to its validity. This article then constructs a taxonomy of the various procedural irregularities that were found to have occurred, the responsibility of institutional actors for their occurrence, and their legal consequences. The final substantive sections of this article examine how the iotc ultimately dealt with the situation and what potential role the available dispute settlement procedures could have had in addressing the discussed procedural irregularities.