Minority report? The Singapore Convention

• How the Singapore Convention works.
• The need for the Singapore Convention.
• Unintended negative consequences?
• How best to help expedite and promote international commercial mediation?

The coming into force of the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (the Singapore Convention) on 20 September 2020 has been heralded far and wide. Commentators have lined up to extol the virtues of this new international instrument hailing it a game changer for international commercial mediation. Certainly, at present, international commercial mediation activity lags behind its use within many domestic jurisdictions. While there may be a range of reasons for this, it has been argued previously that the lack of a uniform enforcement mechanism for international mediated settlement agreements (IMSAs) akin to that which applies to arbitral awards under the New York Convention has stifled demand from would-be users. The Singapore Convention seeks to directly address these concerns. In this article, however,