On 14 September 2021, a Decree (no. 34) by the government of Dubai (currently only available in Arabic)  (the Decree) abolished two of Dubai’s most successful arbitration institutions: the Dubai Maritime Arbitration Centre (EMAC) and the DIFC-LCIA Centre.1)The DIFC-LCIA was established as a joint venture between Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Dubai Arbitration Institute (DAI),…

The 4th Iraq Energy Forum (IEF), coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the Iraq Energy Institute, took place this year on 28-29 March at the Rasheed Royal Tulip Hotel. Politically and economically, the context of this IEF was important. The context was that the global reconstruction package in Kuwait had been agreed with the IMF and…

  It has been on the cards for many years. But on 6 February 2018, days before the Kuwait reconstruction conference, the Iraqi cabinet officially agreed to endorse the ratification of New York Convention of 1958 and table it with Parliament. The decision finally to accede to the treaty coincides with the eradication of Da-esh…

In the middle of uncertainty over the economic implications of a European Union without Britain and against a continuing rise in the popularity of arbitration as an avenue for redress by corporate investors, a round-table discussion at a chambers on third-party funding of disputes on Tuesday 12 July 2017 could not have come at a…

Three decades, two wars, one occupation, and multiple democratic elections later, I found myself back in my country of birth, Iraq, in April 2017. I was invited to Baghdad by the Iraq Energy Institute (IEI) as a speaker at the 2017 Iraq Energy Forum (IEF), under the patronage of the Iraq government and the Iraq…

On a rainy Monday 19 September 2016, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP hosted an ICC YAF event at its London offices on the importance of women in our arbitration world. The issue of gender diversity was at the forefront of the agenda, and taking the Pledge for Equal Representation in Arbitration (www.arbitrationpledge.com). The YAF coincided with…

Background Earlier this July, a regional militant group calling itself ‘the Avengers’ was reported to have detonated some pipelines in Nigeria’s Qua Iboe, the country’s largest export stream. Shortly afterwards, ExxonMobil’s subsidiary, Mobil Producing Nigeria (MPN), declared force majeure on its exports of crude oil in Qua Iboe. The world, as we know, has become…

There is a saying in Bosnia and Herzegovina: “A tree does not grow from the sky”. In the same vein, an arbitration-friendly legal environment does not come about without much persistence and hard graft. As expert consultants tasked with assisting the Commercial Law Development Programme (CLDP) division of the U.S. Department of Commerce with its…

The Middle East is undergoing a period of extreme political, economic and social unrest. In modern Iraq, the chaos wrought by Da’esh is causing major difficulties for the government and for ordinary businesses and individuals. However, in the midst of this turmoil, on 18 November 2015, Iraq finally made good its promise by ratifying the…

Setting the scene Iraq currently ranks with Libya and Yemen amongst those recalcitrant Arab states that have thus far failed to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards of 1958 (the New York Convention or Convention). This state of affairs and the inadequacy of the country’s domestic and…