Join us for the YAWP Breakfast Event: How to Effectively Kickstart Your Arbitration. This practical session will guide you through the key early steps in arbitration, including appointing the tribunal, managing costs, choosing the style of proceedings, and preparing for a case management conference. Whether you’re new to arbitration or looking to refine your approach, you’ll gain valuable insights to set your case up for success. Enjoy breakfast, connect with peers, and get your questions answered by experienced practitioners
Venue: Capital Club - DIFC - Gate Village 03
Navigating Tax & Arbitration in the India UAE Corridor: From Mutual Agreement Procedures to Bilateral Investment Treaties
A high profile Two Hours event during Dubai Arbitration Week 2025 exploring tax disputes and arbitration in the India–UAE corridor. The program addresses MAP implementation in India and the UAE, investor state disputes under the 2024 India–UAE BIT. The goal is to enhance collaboration between tax and arbitration professionals.
Dialogue with Judges: Cross-Cultural Exchange on Judicial Support in Arbitration
This session will foster an exchange between leading members of the judiciary and arbitration practitioners. Building on RAC’s series of conferences with judiciary members from the MENA region, this session will feature judges from across the MENA region as well as from other key jurisdictions worldwide. By bringing together judges, arbitrators, and legal practitioners from diverse legal systems, we will explore how different courts interact with arbitration – highlighting both regional developments and global trends.
The discussion will address key questions such as:
How do different jurisdictions balance judicial oversight with autonomy of arbitration?
What are the emerging best practices for enforcing arbitral awards and interim measures?
How can courts and arbitrators collaborate more effectively to enhance efficiency and fairness?
From Conflict to Resolution: Managing Disputes in Mega Infrastructure Projects
This networking lunch and panel discussion on Dispute Resolution in Mega Infrastructure Projects will bring together leading experts to share strategies for managing multi-stakeholder claims, maintaining complex programmes, and mitigating risks before they escalate. Designed for professionals in construction, law, and project management, this interactive session will provide real-world insights and proven approaches to safeguard budgets, optimize time, and strengthen stakeholder relationships on large-scale developments.
Paper Trails and Red Flags: The Challenges of Meeting Your Evidential Burden
Please join us for a panel discussion on the challenges of overcoming evidential hurdles in international arbitration.
Winning or losing a case can so often hinge on evidence. Building a persuasive narrative and robust case theory will always be an uphill battle where evidence is missing, incomplete, or in the possession of the other party. This can be particularly challenging in the context of bribery and corruption, fraud, and company mismanagement.
Our experts will discuss the ways in which evidentiary hurdles can be overcome while also mitigating the risks of evidence being discarded by a tribunal or deemed inadmissible.
This panel event is an interactive real-world scenario-based session during which the panellists (including senior Covington lawyers and members of FRA’s forensic accounting team) will share experiences from matters which involved a novel evidentiary issue. Each scenario will be outlined in turn for the audience, identifying the key issues and the dilemma that needed to be addressed, with audience members encouraged to offer their own perspectives.
The discussion will be followed by networking drinks. We look forward to seeing you there
DIAC and Horizons & Co Business Breakfast
Business breakfast
“International Adjudication and Arbitration – Enforcing Dispute Board Decisions and Arbitral Awards”
Key points concerning Dispute Boards and international arbitration in the construction industry and beyond from a legal and technical perspective, with an emphasis on the enforcement of decisions and awards.
Developing an Arbitral Space for Small to Medium Commercial Transactions in Africa
This panel will explore how to make arbitration more accessible, affordable, and effective for Africa’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs)—the backbone of the continent’s economy but often excluded from formal dispute resolution systems. Experts will examine legal, institutional, and technological barriers SMEs face, and discuss practical solutions including simplified arbitration rules, regional arbitration centers, online dispute resolution (ODR), and capacity-building initiatives. Drawing on case studies and global best practices, the session will identify strategies to create a scalable, inclusive, and harmonized arbitral ecosystem that supports cross-border trade and intra-African commerce under frameworks like the AfCFTA.
What will the UAE’s role be as the arbitration winds move from West to East?
As trade winds change direction, moving west to east, it is unsurprising to see international arbitration in places outside North America and Europe. The traditional arbitration centres of Paris and London now compete with Singapore, Dubai, and others from Asia and beyond.
In a sense, we have been here before, some of the earliest trading between civilisations, over 4000 years ago, was between the Indus Valley Civilisation in the Indian Subcontinent with the Mesopotamians. Well before the Portuguese ships arrived in India in the 17th century, during the Abbasid dynasty (8th-12th centuries), Arab traders used the alternating monsoon winds to navigate the Indian Ocean; hence, their name derives from the Arabic word “Mausam” for the weather. During the 9th and 12th centuries, Arab and Persian merchants traded with East African coastal states, with ships plying the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf, bringing import and export goods between the East Indies, China, India, the Arab Lands, Persia, and East Africa. It was a time of great contact between cultures, during which some 37 city-states emerged in what is now Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique.
Not too far away north, on land, along the Silk Road, Persian, Chinese, Arab, Armenian, and Russian traders and missionaries travelled the Silk Road, and in 1335 a Mongol mission to the Pope at Avignon confirmed increased trade and cultural contacts.
But today’s trade goes beyond diverse geographical dynamics, occurring in an increasingly digital space cutting across traditional boundaries.
Looking ahead, what does this mean for the resolution of disputes by international arbitration – and what will the UAE’s role be in this evolving landscape. Join SADRC for a discussion on the challenges and opportunities the changing arbitration landscape brings to the UAE and beyond.
Creating the “Future Leaders” in Arbitration: Shaping Experts, Arbitrators and Counsels for the Next Era
Michael Tonkin HKA Partner, Construction Claims & Expert
Clare Lavin HKA Partner, Forensic Accounting Commercial Damages
Sercan Kocamanoglu HKA Principal, Construction Claims & Expert
Naief Yahia Al Tamimi Partner, Head of Dispute Resolution – Dubai
Abdul Jinadu Keating Chambers Barrister