UNCITRAL Working Group II : Dispute Settlement, Day 1

Yesterday marked the launch of the 79th session of the UNCITRAL Working Group II : Dispute Settlement, taking place this week at United Nations in New York.

After extensive first-day debates, delegates from Switzerland proposed an alternative drafting of the Highly Expedited Arbitration Model Clause (which can found at the link here), which seems to have been mostly agreed upon by the other delegates.

This new draft of the Expedited Arbitration Rules Article 7 Model Clause introduces several modifications, including :

• The reduction of the time period for the parties to reach agreement on the appointment of a sole arbitrator to seven days from 15 days in the initial draft. 
• Paragraph (f)--pertaining to the Tribunal’s power to determine that the Expedited Arbitration Rules no longer apply is extended to the right to determine that the modifications of the Expedited Arbitration Rules no longer apply--has been moved to become paragraph (a).
• Whether the time period mentioned in paragraph (e), within which an award shall be made can be extended for a period of time (option 1) or not at all (option 2), is still up for debate.

Finally, among other Expedited Arbitration Rules articles being reviewed, the possibility of awards rendered without reasoning from article 11 is being appraised even though it raises a lot of concerns for the delegates and the observers.

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The author, a CPR Institute Spring 2024 intern, is a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Dispute Resolution and Advocacy student at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, New York.

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