Tuesday 14 December 2010

Qatar: A centre for 'quality' international dispute resolution?| Neil Rose | Law | guardian.co.uk

Amid the huge surge in activity triggered by Qatar winning the bid for the 2022 World Cup – 900 construction contracts were activated the day after the decision – today will see prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani officially open a heavily British-influenced landmark in the nation's legal infrastructure: the civil and commercial court and the regulatory tribunal for the Qatar financial c entre (QFC).

The court is the final piece of Qatar's plan to build a world-class international financial centre, following on from the QFC authority and the QFC regulatory authority. During five years of gestation, the court's ambition has grown from resolving disputes within the QFC to wider disputes within the Qatari business community and now to be an international commercial dispute resolution centre open to parties from all over the globe (it is a "multi-door" court offering both litigation and alternative dispute resolution).

It is headed by the former lord chief justice Lord Woolf. Qatar is one of the more liberal nations in the Gulf, and one of the few to have had ties with Israel over the years, so it was undoubtedly a smart move to persuade such an eminent Jewish jurist to preside over the court.

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