1. Introduction Although private commercial mediation has been offered in Vietnam for around ten years,[1] Some arbitration centres in Vietnam introduced and offered private commercial mediation since 2007 the Vietnamese Government’s enactment of Decree 22/2017/NĐ-CP on 24 February 2017 on Commercial Mediation (hereinafter Decree 22) has been significantly meaningful. Firstly, the Decree 22 has steadily…

What a different a month makes! A new EU Recommendation on Mediation, the launch of this year’s Mediation Awareness Week and a brand shiny new Mediation Act, 2017. Yes, the long awaited legislation that I have been blogging about for years now was finally signed into law by the President this week. This development fits…

In the past few years Singapore has been busy revising, refining and extending its dispute resolution offerings in cross-border litigation, arbitration and mediation. In 2017 Singapore offers international parties a full suite of dispute resolution services for commercial cross-border disputes. The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) is well-established, having been founded in 1991, and Singapore…

In November 2013, the Ministry of Law Working Group on International Commercial Mediation delivered its report on developing international commercial mediation in Singapore. Amongst the key recommendations in this report were the creation of a mediation service provider for international matters (the Singapore International Mediation Centre), the creation of a mediation accreditation body (the Singapore…

Last week the long-awaited Irish Mediation Bill was finally published. Its purpose is to introduce a coherent comprehensive regulatory framework for mediation in Ireland. For a number of reasons it is interesting also for international readers. The hitherto mediation regulations in Ireland were criticized not only by experts but also by the local judiciary. In…

Mediation as a means to resolve disputes without the assistance of the court has become more and more popular in the post-Soviet bloc countries, for example Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania. The Law on Mediation in Lithuania was adopted by Parliament in 2008. Although enthusiasts of mediation welcomed the new law, mediation has not accelerated as…

On the 3rd of November 2016 Verkhovna Rada – the Parliament of Ukraine – voted for the draft law “On mediation” on the first reading. This is indeed an important event for Ukrainian mediators as they have been working hard towards it during the last eight years. All previous attempts to pass the law through…

Everywhere judicial policy makers are seeking new ways for the distribution of justice. In the Netherlands a project is underway to abolish all paperwork from the courts. Litigation will before long be conducted entirely digitally. In order to curtail government spending, experiments are being conducted to steer claimants away from the courts and become more…

With the Rio 2016 Olympics still on some of our minds, mediation in Brazil may seem like a star shining far, far away. However this distance may be closer than we think as Brazil is a country where new approaches and modalities are starting to be used to deal with disputes because, among other things,…