Arbitral institutions COVID-19 joint statement

Arbitration and COVID-19

Many parties and tribunals have turned to us at the arbitral institutions for information and guidance in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak, and we are very conscious that these are challenging times for everyone.

As is being demonstrated daily across the globe, cooperation and collaboration is at the center of an effective response to COVID-19. Our respective institutions are committed to working together at this time for this purpose.
The joint ambition of our institutions is to support international arbitration’s ability to contribute to stability and foreseeability in a highly unstable environment, including by ensuring that pending cases may continue and that parties may have their cases heard without undue delay.

Collaboration is particularly important as each of our institutions looks to ensure that we make the best use of digital technologies for working remotely.

We encourage parties and arbitrators to discuss any impact of the pandemic and potential ways to address it in an open and constructive manner. Arbitral tribunals and parties are asked to mitigate the effects of any impediments to the largest extent possible while ensuring the fairness and efficiency of arbitral proceedings. In so doing, they are invited to use the full extent of our respective institutional rules and any case management techniques that may permit arbitrations to substantially progress without undue delay despite such impediments.

By jointly enabling international arbitration to deliver some degree of certainty in a volatile economic climate, we seek to jointly contribute to a world better prepared to meet the challenges of the post-corona crisis.

Our institutions stand ready to assist to the best of our ability, and welcome parties and tribunals to reach out and to consult guidelines and information as published on our respective websites.