Bringing Mediation to the Fore in Asia Developments, Challenges and Potentials

jointly organized by

the Hanns Seidel Foundation Thailand, the German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance (CPG), Faculty of Law, Thammasat University, and the Asian Governance Foundation (AGF)

October 7-8, Lebua at State Tower hotel, Silom, Bangkok

CPG´s Mediation Center (CMC), which support of the Hanns-Seidel Foundation, is inviting to a regional forum for mediators, researchers, and stakeholders of mediation in Asia, which will take place in Bangkok, Thailand on October 7-8 at Lebua at State Tower hotel. The participation is free of charge including all meals and services upon invitation.

BACKGROUND

As mediation continues to be an increasingly requested form of alternative dispute resolution globally, it is also gaining momentum in Asia, especially after a number of important jurisdictions in Asian have introduced a new or reformed legal basis for a legally explicitly regulated and enforced mediation procedure over recent years.

With Hong Kong being among the early trendsetters in Asia, many countries in Southeast Asia such as Singapore, Indonesia or Vietnam have introduced new or reformed related legislation in 2017, followed by Thailand in 2019.

Meanwhile, mediation has also been increasingly regulated regionally and for cross-border constellations with, for example, the EU Mediation Directive on Civil and Commercial Aspects of Mediation of 2008, the 2018 adopted UN Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (Singapore Convention on Mediation), and the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Mediation of 2018.

Among the Asian nations, mediation is differently regulated and received by the forensic practice. While countries like Malaysia (based on the 2012 Mediation Act), Indonesia or Singapore provide highly institutionalized, structured and differentiated mediation mechanisms in Southeast Asia, the Thai law offers a more modestly regulated mechanism that still corresponds with a markedly lower demand for mediation in the legal market although stakeholders especially in the country´s judiciary are working to enhance the role mediation plays.

The different responses towards the proposal of mediation within Asia pose some questions. At the first glance, it might come counterintuitively that some countries are much less perceptive to alternative dispute resolution in general and mediation in particular than others in the region.

After all, it is widely assumed that many Asian societies are more averse to adversarial encounters than Western ones, which would suggest a greater perceptivity especially for mediation. Even more, modern mediation as a legally defined form of alternative dispute resolution often resembles the traditional forms of conflict settlement in many Asian societies which would also suggest a corresponding support for mediation. All the cultural, legal, and even political factors for the degree of support for mediation in different Asian countries notwithstanding, there is, however, a growing demand in Asia to enhance mediation as a practical tool of conflict settlement.

This demand is reflecting the global trend but also responding to the current challenges almost all countries are currently facing due to worryingly increasing economic pressure. The accumulated repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war are globally producing economic hardships with supply chain interruptions, commodity shortages and generally rising financial and economic risks. In Asia the entrenching Cold War between the West and the Sino-Russian axis is supporting de-globalization and threatening with strategies and tactics of economic decoupling, while military tensions are also on the rise in Asia.

In this situation, Asian jurisdictions are called to take all efforts to keep the trust of foreign investors which is significantly supported by their trust in the available dispute resolution mechanisms both nationally and for cross-border constellations in the region.

THE CONFERENCE

Against this background, CPG´s Mediation Center (CMC) aims at bringing together experts and stakeholders from across Asia to exchange views and experiences with an aim of developing the foundation for an Asian network of professional mediation actors that promotes all sorts of cooperation among stakeholders.

Besides creating a forum for professional exchange and networking, the conference seeks to foster discussions of challenges and solutions for the development of mediation in the region with an eye on questions such as:

• The overall design and characteristics of the legally supported and enforced mediation mechanism in various Asian countries
• The qualification, training, and oversight of mediators
• The endorsement, recognition and enforcement of mediated settlements
• Local characteristics of mediation styles and the particular challenges in national jurisdictions

BEHIND THE CONFERENCE

The conference is organized by the German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance (‘CPG’) and the Asian Governance Foundation (AGF), with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation Thailand/Laos.

CPG is an academic institute and think tank attached to the Faculty of Law of Thammasat University in Bangkok. Built upon a cooperation between the German universities of Frankfurt and Münster, and the Thammasat University in Thailand, it is one of only five Centers of Excellence worldwide established since 2009 under the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal Government. CPG is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and receives administrative support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Our expertise extends to comparative constitutional and administrative law, human rights, peace and security studies, and governance and compliance, as well as law and policy reform. CPG – throughout its members and partners – offers conferences and seminars, training courses and workshops, and project evaluations and consultancy services to the public and interested parties.

If you would like to learn more about CPG, we recommend our institutional profile.

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