1. In the present proceedings, the Tribunal was, for the first time since its establishment, faced with a situation in which one of the parties, the Russian Federation in this case, did not appear. The Tribunal in paragraphs 46-57 of the Order thus had to examine the implications of the non-appearance of the Russian Federation in the present proceedings and to consider how the proceedings should be conducted in such a situation. Nowhere in the above paragraphs, however, did the Tribunal invoke or make reference to article 28 of the Statute of the Tribunal (hereinafter “the Statute”), the only provision in the Statute dealing with a situation of default of appearance, thus raising doubt about its applicability to the present proceedings. In so doing, the Tribunal apparently followed the practice of the International Court of Justice (hereinafter “the ICJ”) in the matter, this being that the ICJ has never made specific reference to its own default provision in proceedings for the indication of provisional measures. In my view, however, a better approach is to apply article 28 of the Statute to the present proceedings in conjunction with article 290, paragraph 5, of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (hereinafter “the Convention”), under which the request for provisional measures was made by the Applicant. Let me explain why.