Of the six States that have ratified the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (“Convention”) only Singapore seems to have made any requisite preparation for its implementation, by passing the Singapore Convention Mediation Act in February 2020. Yet, following the Convention’s entry into force on 12 September 2020, forthcoming developments in…

More than four years have passed since the Armenian Cassation Court—the highest court in Armenia—held in its EKD/1910/02/13 (2014) decision (“Cassation Court Decision”) that only state courts may exercise jurisdiction over the issue of contract invalidity (see previous post). To recall, the Cassation Court reasoned that civil rights could be protected through judicial, administrative or…

For many years, arbitration has been the de facto vehicle of choice for the resolution of investor-state disputes. However, despite the wholesale and widespread adoption of mediation in every sort of dispute, mediation is used rarely in investor-state disputes (Systra v. Philippines is one example). As of this writing, only 11 (1.3% of total ICSID…

On 19 June 2015, the Armenian Parliament adopted a package of laws related to arbitration. This was the first arbitration reform since the adoption of the Law on Commercial Arbitration (“Law”) in December 2006. The law package came into force on 7 July 2015. One of the reasons for the reform was the need for…

On July 18, 2014 the Cassation Court – the highest court in Armenia, in the case EKD/1910/02/13 delivered a decision (“Decision”) which paralyzed the whole arbitration system in the country. In the mentioned case the Cassation Court (“Court”) needed to answer a question whether an arbitral tribunal was entitled to decide the matter of invalidity…