The Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy (SIDRA) launched its International Dispute Resolution Survey: 2022 Final Report on 31 August 2022. The SIDRA Survey is commissioned by the Singapore Ministry of Law and is into its second iteration, with the first SIDRA Survey Report published in 2020.   The 2022 Final Report continues SIDRA’s global study…

Are you doing it online? A lot? Regularly? Just sometimes? Do you talk to others about it or keep it mostly to yourself? And, if you do talk about it, do you just flippantly mention it as a throw-away line that everyone should hear or do you really engage in deep conversations about what it…

Introduction  China’s noticeable absence from ISDS cases raises interesting questions about the resolution of investor-state disputes from a Chinese perspective. So far, there have only been 15 ISDS cases brought on behalf of Chinese investors, with China having been on the receiving end of 9 claims. One might consider these figures very low, when compared,…

Effective inter-governmental relations among the constituent parts of the United Kingdom are essential in an era of increased devolution of powers, post-Brexit allocation of responsibility and contested narratives about the future of the (uncodified) UK constitution. Background One of the rather depressing aspects of the constitutional impasse in the UK is that inter-governmental relations (IGR)…

This series of blogs posts explores investment mediation from a variety of angles. In this third installment, we explain the primary differences between mediation and conciliation at ICSID. In part one, we explore how to determine whether mediation is an appropriate option for resolving an investment dispute, while part two looked at what mediation is—and…

Slowly but surely the dispute resolution landscape is shifting for investment related disputes. More than half the respondents to the International Dispute Resolution Survey published by the Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy (SIDRA) last year indicated that they have been involved in an investor-state dispute between 2016 and 2018. And, it is of course no…

Anna Howard’s first book, ‘EU Cross-Border Commercial Mediation: Listening to Disputants – Changing the Frame; Framing the Changes’ (published by Kluwer), is an important contribution to the literature about the practice and promotion of mediation. It deserves a wide readership among academics and practitioners alike and I hope that potential readers will not be deflected…

Interest is growing in the use of mediation for investor-state disputes. Recent webinars on investor-state mediation (including SIDRA’s recent webinar) have explored ICSID’s new investor-state mediation rules, the role of the Singapore Convention for investor-state mediation and the need for further domestic legislation on mediation. Discussions at these virtual conferences have also emphasised the importance…

The introduction of the Singapore Convention on Mediation (SCM) last year has intensified the long-standing debate on professional mediator standards. A previous blog post called for China to streamline its legislation on commercial mediation, and another spoke of the prospects of proliferating and harmonizing standards in the Middle East. The idea of a global mediator…

Settlement agreements reached through mediation are mere contracts and not court decisions. As such, and in the absence of a statutory framework, enforcement of mediated settlements can only be carried out voluntarily by the parties. Failing which, the aggrieved party must enter into a court or arbitral process through which the defaulting party is compelled…