The Government of Guyana’s aim to become a regional arbitration hub took a step closer to reality with thirty attorneys-at-law recently completing an arbitration training exercise.
A release from the Attorney General’s Office on Saturday stated that it had conducted the exercise in collaboration with the International Senior Lawyers Project (ISLP) which received financial and technical support through the Advocates for International Deve-lopment’s Rule of Law Expertise United Kingdom (ROLE UK) Pro-gramme, and funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office.
Attorneys from the Attorney General’s Chambers, public sector, Guyana Bar Association, and Berbice Bar Association, were trained at the Grand Coastal Hotel, East Coast Demerara, from March 21 to March 24.
According to the release, the workshop was part of an ongoing human resource capacity-building agenda in keeping with government’s stated commitment to create a modern platform for arbitration as an effective method of settling commercial and other disputes in Guyana. It explained that a necessary component of this initiative is to equip attorneys with the requisite skills to draft and interpret arbitration clauses and participate in arbitration proceedings. The release said the training formed part of building the foundation for Guyana to become an arbitration hub for the settlement of commercial disputes, not only locally but in the Caribbean region.
The exercise focussed on areas such as arbitration agreements, conduct of arbitration proceedings, interim measures and preliminary orders, evidence collection, written submissions, arbitration hearings, enforcement of arbitration awards and arbitration institutions. It utilised the draft Arbitration Bill completed by the Drafting Department of the Attorney General’s Chambers as part of a familiarisation and consultative exercise. The programme was facilitated by ISLP Regional Legal Advisor Pedro Villegas and arbitration experts Charline Lim, Rose Naing, Ankita Ritwik, and Marryum Kahloon, from the United States of America and the United Kingdom.
The release quoted Villegas as saying, “The workshop has been received positively by state counsel from the AG’s Chambers and other governmental agencies. The participants emphasised that the knowledge acquired will facilitate the implementation of arbitration in Guyana and highlighted the potential for international arbitration to play a critical role in advancing the country’s legal system. The positive reception of the workshop highlights the willingness of Guyana’s legal community to embrace alternative approaches to resolving disputes and underscores the government’s commitment to strengthening the rule of law.”
Meanwhile, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall SC, in remarks at one of the training sessions, expressed gratitude to ISLP and the arbitration experts for their collaboration on this important initiative, the release said. He was quoted as saying that arbitration was quickly becoming the preferred method of settling commercial disputes especially in large contractual and commercial undertakings, locally and internationally. He opined also, the release said, that as a result of the transformation taking place in Guyana and with the country becoming a very attractive investment destination and boasting one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, there is a need to establish a modern legal arbitration framework.
He also pointed out, the release said, that “hundreds of contracts” are executed in the public sector involving “billions of dollars” with local as well as international developmental partners. Almost every one of these contracts contains arbitration clauses which mandate the arbitrations to be conducted outside of Guyana because we do not have the modern legislative framework nor the human resource capacity to do them locally, the release quoted him as saying.
“The short-term objective is to make Guyana as attractive as possible for the resolution of disputes arising out of commercial contracts executed locally. The long-term objective is to create the type of environment, legal infrastructure, and human resource base to make Guyana an attractive arbitration hub for the Caribbean and even South and Latin America. Our government sees no reason why we cannot strive to achieve these goals…,” Nandlall added.
