Prior to Christmas I found myself in Jerusalem, Israel – the heart of the heart of the conflict of our time. Here, no one agrees on anything – even the monks from various Christian denominations (Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Catholics and others) responsible for The Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Christ was crucified, argue amongst…

I once had the honour to meet the first woman in Space, Valentina Tereshkova. She said something that has always stuck in my mind: “Once you have been in Space you appreciate how small and fragile the earth is”. She meant that Space is a good place to be if you want put things into…

As much as we might like mediation’s fluid and often intangible nature, every now and then it can be of benefit to come across some research which enables us to take a step back and look at the impact our work is having on our clients, even long after the execution of the Memorandum of…

(Foreign) investor – (host) State disputes are for many reasons an intriguing and fast developing part of legal and dispute resolution practice. Since the late 1990s, the number of such disputes has increased sharply: In 1997, 19 known cases were brought against states. By 2007, there were over 250 known cases, and more than 450…

The location was the Old Post House in Stafford, a traditional English, allegedly haunted, building with excellent conference facilities, good food and awful coffee. The occasion was World Conflict Resolution Day, this year on 18th October. About 45 mediators from around the world had gathered for a day of lectures on workshops on mediation. The…

I come from a Western mediation tradition that argues strenuously for neutrality and impartiality in a mediator. Indeed, one of the first questions lawyers will ask when hiring me is whether or not I have any conflict of interest – in other words, do I know those involved in the dispute, have I worked with…

On June 1, 2012, the revised version of the Swiss Rules on International Arbitration entered into force (see the recent following posts on the Kluwer Arbitration Blog: http://wolterskluwerblogs.com/blog/2012/05/31/revised-swiss-rules-of-international-arbitration-enter-into-force/ and http://wolterskluwerblogs.com/blog/2012/06/01/entry-into-force-of-the-revised-swiss-rules-of-international-arbitration-%E2%80%93-1-june-2012/). These new Rules (see text of the Swiss Rules at https://www.swissarbitration.org/sa/en/rules.php), based on the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules, were initially enacted in 2004 in order to…

In a previous post I had noted the absence of better inter-connection between the ICC ADR Rules (available at http://www.iccwbo.org/court/adr/id4452/index.html) and the new ICC Arbitration Rules (available at http://www.iccwbo.org/court/arbitration/id4424/index.html) although the latter now open the door, at an early stage of the arbitration proceedings (i.e. the Case Management Conference: Art. 24 para. 1 of the…