International Bar Association Meets This Week

The International Bar Association kicked off its Annual Meeting on Sunday, Oct. 30 in Dubai with an address by Nobel laureate Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei.  Throughout this week, the IBA Mediation Committee, under the leadership of Babak Barin of Montreal, will offer some interesting panels.

Along with the IBA Arbitration Committee, a joint panel will address the strategic use of mediation-type processes in the course of an arbitral proceeding. Leading arbitration counsel, international arbitrators and mediators from around the world will review the challenges and opportunities raised by processes where the parties agree either pre- or post-dispute to combine various methods of dispute resolution.

The Mediation Techniques Subcommittee will discuss “The art of mediation — what skills are needed to effectively mediate and how to obtain them.”

Investor-state mediation will be the topic of another session. The existing legal infrastructure on the topic is considered by many to be out-dated. The State Mediation Subcommittee’s has identified ways in which investor-state mediation can be improved and promoted and a draft set of rules will be presented for evaluation and critique.

Additionally, Lorraine Brennan, president of Arbitral Women, will lead a panel on November 2 on “International Commercial Arbitration in Times of Rapid Political Change.” Panelists include Mireille Bouzols Breton, former Senior Legal VP of Technip, Judge and Arbitrator; Fiona Campbell, Senior Associate, Special Projects & Dispute Resolution, Al Tamimi & Company and Nayla Comair-Obeid, Arbitrator and Managing Partner, Obeid Law Firm.

The Arbitration Committee, co-chaired by Mark W. Friedman and Judith Gill, will also present sessions on hot topics in international arbitration; review of investment arbitration awards; winning damages and other remedies in international arbitration; and perspectives from providers and users on arbitration institutions in the Middle East and Asia.