The Singapore convention on enforcement of mediated settlement agreements (mediation): from dream to reality?

Abstract

On 26th of June, 2018, at its 51th session, the UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) announced the completion of two important documents — a draft United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation, as well as the draft amendments to the UNCITRAL Model L aw on International Commercial Conciliation (2002) that, to a large extent, repeats the provisions of the draft Convention. It is expected that after its approval by the UN General Assembly on August 1, 2019, the Convention will be open for signature and, if ratified by a significant number of States, will play an important role in increasing the attractiveness of this method of dispute settlement to the international business community, allowing it to compete with international commercial arbitration.

In this regard, the article attempts to analyze the main provisions of this Convention and to assess the feasibility of accession to it of the Russian Federation, taking into account the fact that currently in Russia this method of settlement of cross-border commercial disputes is not widespread. According to the results of the analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that the adoption of this Convention will create a basis for the enforcement of international agreements reached as a result of mediation and acceptable for States with different legal, social and economic conditions, while maintaining the inherent flexibility of this method of dispute resolution. This, in turn, will reduce the likelihood of parties to cross-border commercial disputes going to court or international commercial arbitration after mediation and, accordingly, will increase the attractiveness of this method of dispute resolution for the parties.