Author: Walid John Kassir**
Published: December 2004
Description:
I. THE NEED OF NEUTRAL PLACES FOR NORTH-SOUTH INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION
The strategic importance of international arbitration is obvious in our times. Its continual expansion in the last thirty years is really remarkable, as evidenced by the increasing number of cases, huge amounts involved, and the diversification of the participants (both at the level of the sectors concerned and the countries involved). With the progress of globalization, arbitration is more than ever solidifying its role as the main form of justice of international business and is growing significantly with it. Of course, this implies a deep change in the attitude of developing countries toward international arbitration, if we compare the present situation to the one that followed the end of the colonialism period.
A. The Original Suspicions of Developing Countries toward International Arbitration
From mainly the 1950s until the early 1970s, a sort of clash occurred between the young states of the South, attached to their newly recovered…
*Current Developments
**Professor at St. Joseph University Law School (Beirut); international lawyer (LL.M Harvard Law School, Ph.D Sorbonne University, Paris I); and author of several publications related to international business law, conflict of laws and comparative law.