Qatar International Center for Conciliation and Arbitration (QICCA) yesterday signed a cooperation agreement with The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA).
The agreement was signed by QICCA's board member, Sheikh Dr Thani bin Ali Al Thani and Hugo Siblesz, Secretary-General of PCA, at Qatar Chamber headquarters.
“With this cooperation agreement countries and parties, especially from Qatar and the region, will now be able to resolve their disputes in a more convenient manner,” Siblesz told The Peninsula on the sidelines of the signing ceremony.
Siblesz added: “PCA is a global institution which is looking to help its tribunals and parties that it assists. This is a very important step from our perspective, and I hope that it is also important from the perspective of QICCA.”
With this agreement, Qatar has become the second country in the region, after Kuwait, to have signed such cooperation agreements with the Netherlands-based global arbitration institution.
PCA was established in 1899 to facilitate arbitration and other forms of dispute resolution between member-states. Initially it was an inter-governmental body, which eventually developed into a modern, multi-faceted arbitral institution that is now perfectly situated at the juncture between public and private international law to meet the rapidly evolving dispute resolution needs of the international community.
PCA has a mission of dealing with disputes related to anything of public interests. It can be dispute between two states; state versus private parties. But it doesn’t handle disputes which are purely commercial between two parties with no public interests.
However, there are examples of cases, according to Siblesz, that it has handled in the past where two parties are private, but the issue of public interests was involved.
“PCA has 120 member-states who contribute to its budget and defines the institute’s policy and governance. It was originally meant to deal with disputes between two states, but over times member-states have agreed to extend and also deal with mixed arbitrations,” noted Siblesz.
Asked about the legal validity of awards pronounced by PCA arbitration tribunals, he added that such awards are legally binding in principle. “Arbitration is always based on an agreement. So the assumption is, if there is an agreement of arbitration, you also abide by the outcome of the arbitration. It works most of the times, but sometimes it doesn’t. And that is when instruments, like New York Convention, comes into play.” He also added that multi-party agreements such as the New York Convention which has 158 countries as signatories, help in enforcing such awards.
