01 John Lewis - DAW 2019

Arbitration is about choice and one reason that the UAE has been able to establish itself as a modern, successful arbitration hub, is because it offers choice to parties who want to resolve disputes in in a neutral playing field. They want to have a say in the procedural rules that will apply and the court that will supervise the process and they want to determine the nationality of their award for the purposes of enforcement. The UAE offers that choice because it has complimentary civil law and common law seats within the jurisdiction and users can select a legal framework that they are familiar and comfortable with for the purposes of resolving the disputes, whether that is in in the federal civil court system or in the common law DIFC or ADGM systems. Each of these three seats provides a modern uncitral model law based system which provides assurance when it comes to the ratification and enforcement of awards, both regionally, domestically and internationally. In addition, the UAE has a number of home grown institutions, such as the DIAC, the DIFC-LCIA, the Emirates Maritime Arbitration Centre, Tahkeem and ADCAC, and these institutions each have their own bespoke rules, their own features and they service clients in a particular sector and provide options. So when people ask me why is the UAE the best jurisdiction for an arbitration experience, for me, it's not just about giving people options that meet diverse requirements. It's also about doing what the UAE does best and that's providing a consumer driven service to a seven star UAE standard which comes to an enforceable arbitral award at the end. And over the last 10 years, the UAE has firmly established itself on the international arbitration map alongside seats such as London, Paris, Hong Kong and Singapore and it continues to modernise to adapt to the needs of international arbitration users which makes me excited to see how, in the next 10 years, it will innovate to address future needs, whatever they may be.