DOHA: The Qatar Financial Centre Civil and Commercial Court and the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) have joined force to provide mediator skills training.
QFC Civil and Commercial Court Chairman Lord Woolf and CEDR's CEO Karl Mackie signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) formalizing the new collaboration.
As commercial arbitration in the Gulf Region has already experienced significant growth, QFC Commercial and Civil Courts and CEDR expect mediation to follow suit as it offers a flexible fast track route towards settling disputes in days rather than months or years, thus saving vital management time and enabling complex projects to remain on track.
"The idea was to introduce into this part of the world a form of dispute resolution that is in advance of anything produced anywhere else in the world at the moment," Lord Woolf told reporters before the MoU signing.
Lord Woolf was the Chief of Justice for England and Wales from 2000-2005.
He remarked that the introduction of mediation skills will bring new and significant benefits to fast growing economies such as Qatar and neighbouring Gulf states. "Mediation is about consensual, usually non-evaluative, resolution. Because it works consensually, only mediation can bring in business solutions and reputational answers that lie beyond the powers of a Court or an arbitration tribunal", he said.
"I believe that the QFC Court could not be making a more solid start than with training, and to involve international participation just as the Court and Tribunal does in our other activities, he added.
He said the QFC Court is not an institution which is confined to merely providing legal service training is a very important part of what it is seeking to do.
He added that the QFC Civil and Commercial Court is something that is need by those who are investing or carry on commercial activities in Qatar. Besides, it is also part of the legal system of Qatar now and was established by the laws of Qatar and provides an additional dimension to those laws, he said.
The first training course which took place yesterday will be running for almost a week with successful participants becoming accredited mediators, a status which will be recognised internationally in the legal world.
Training consists of a five-day programme of comprehensive tuition in effective dispute resolution where participants are trained in the skills required for effective mediation of commercial disputes and assessed for CEDR Accreditation, widely recognised as a standard of excellence.
Mediations will be held at the QFC Court premises, for which construction commences shortly, where state-of-the art facilities have been specially designed to accommodate mediation and case management. The training sessions will be administered by a joint, integrated, effort by the QFC Court and UK-based CEDR in conjunction.
By Nasser Al Harthy
© The Peninsula 2010
