The Diplomat
Experts from Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and Spain have highlighted the importance of dispute arbitration in the business and commercial sphere in Ibero-America, especially in the current context created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In the current context in which we are immersed, it has become clear the need to do our best, among all, to overcome the natural conflicts that arise, especially when a company tackles the difficult task of accessing new markets, exporting and investing”, said the CEOE International general director and CEIB permanent secretary, Narciso Casado, during the virtual conference Regional Solutions to a Global Problem, organized last Thursday by the Ibero-American Arbitration Center (CIAR) and the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Spain (RAJYL).
Therefore, he continued, it is essential to have arbitration, mediation and inclusion instruments “and thanks to CIAR, we have in the Region with a quality, fast, practical and professional tool”. “CEOE joined the initiative, from the very first moment, to support and be part of the Ibero-American Arbitration Center, and the 24 organizations that make up CEIB joined later”, Casado reported during the closing of the event, in whose organization also collaborated the Council of Ibero-American Businessmen (CEIB), the Ibero-American Federation of Young Entrepreneurs (FIJE), and the European Arbitration Association (AEA).
For his part, the president of CIAR, Javier Íscar, said that the organization he heads, “as an Arbitration Center”, offers “companies quality arbitrators who provide legal certainty to potential conflicts, with the support of a professional and plural secretariat that also offers the possibility of holding virtual hearings to ensure the smooth running of the arbitrations entrusted to us”. He also announced that a conference on arbitration will be held in Brazil in the near future and that other conferences will be held in other Ibero-American countries in order to review the measures implemented and look for possible ways to improve in the future.
One of the speakers, Castor Díaz, Professor of International Law and member of the RAJYL, gave a brief overview of the history of arbitration in Ibero-America. Specifically, he explained that arbitration was first discussed at the First International Conference of American States in 1889, which approved this mechanism to resolve possible disputes. In 1923, a resolution on chambers of commerce and commercial arbitration was approved in Santiago de Chile to resolve this type of disputes and, finally, in 1933, the foundations for this mechanism were laid in Montevideo. Thus, in Diaz’s opinion, arbitration has been a constant in the history of the Americas.
Other speakers at the event included the president of the National Confederation of Private Business Institutions of Peru-CONFIEP, María Isabel León; the co-founder and legal counsel of Spelcaster Legal (Mexico), Viviana Castro; the partner of Siquiera Castro (Brazil), Guilherme J. Dantas; and the partner of Brigard Urrutia (Colombia), Irma Rivera, as well as Luis Martí, a member of the RAJYL.
