Conflict of Laws in Effectuating International Commercial Settlement Agreements Under the Singapore Convention on Mediation

Mahmoud, Mohamed

doi:10.21608/ijdjl.2021.94006.1113

Conflict of Laws in Effectuating International Commercial Settlement Agreements Under the Singapore Convention on Mediation

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Mohamed Mahmoud

Faculty of Law - Menofia University

10.21608/ijdjl.2021.94006.1113

Abstract

On September 2020 the UN Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (Singapore Mediation Convention) came into force. Notwithstanding that the Convention aims to promote the mediation in resolving international trade disputes, as a more fixable alternative and lower costing alternative to arbitration, the question raises on whether the Convention has successfully avoided the conflict of laws problems.

This article aims to demonstrate whether the judge, while examining whether settlement agreement lays within the scope of the Convention, may face some choice-of-law problems, that is; the applicability of the Convention is dependent on the existence of a commercial settlement agreement provided that that agreement is international, from the one hand, and resulting from mediation, from the other hand. Also, the situations in which the choice-of-law problem may raise when examining the conditions stipulated for by the Convention for the international commercial settlement agreement to be effectuated, shall be discussed.

In addition to demonstrating the ambit in which the Convention has resorted to either the Conflict Rules or the “réglé materiel” with regard to the above questions, this article explains the extent to which the Convention has followed the well-established principles of private international law, whether in regard to settlement agreement which have been excluded from the Convention’s scope of application, or the consequences of the accession to the Convention by regional economic integration organizations.

Keywords