On 20 April 2017 the Marriot Grand Hotel Moscow hosted the 4th Annual RAA Conference. This event is one of the leading forums for Russia-wide discussions, in which the key changes in the Russian arbitration and internal arbitration laws have always been the primary focus.
The recent arbitration reform, as well as progress of registration by the leading international arbitration institutes in Russia have been the leading official topic of discussion. Such issues as possible americanization of international arbitration and the review of the top 2016 arbitration cases, have also been quite popular during the conference.
Yet, the hottest debates arose during the session named “A chicken is not a bird, Poland is not a foreign state, a woman is not an arbitrator? - Do female arbitrators require any separate status?” moderated by Anna Grischenkova, international arbitration and litigation partner of KIAP. During the session Anna has presented the results of the latest survey devoted to gender balance in international arbitration, which soon will be published by RAA. You can view Anna’s presentation in our Analytics section.
Whether women arbitrators require separate status has become a subject of intense arguments between the members of the Conference. The opinions became divided 50/50 – some considered that arbitration lacks female arbitrators whereas the arbitration panels can be enriched with bright and talented professionals should more women be admitted to them. Others remarked that the role of women in arbitration will increase gradually as a normal evolution of relatively young arbitration in Russia, whereas rapid measures aimed to increase the proportion of women in arbitration may escalate into the “struggle for the rights of female arbitrators” and lead to completely opposite results.
At last all participants stroke a compromise that in any event both men and women can be equally well-placed to act as arbitrators or attorneys during arbitration, meaning that professionalism, but not gender, can and should remain the leading criteria for choosing your arbitrator.
The speakers of the session were: Dr. Beata Gessel-Kalinovska vel Kalisz, ICC arbitrator, former President of the Leviathan court of Arbitration (Poland), Nikolas Peacock, Partner at Herbert Smith Freehills, Prof. Ivan Zykin, vice-chairman of ICAC, Antonias Dimolitsa, the Managing Partner of Dimolitsa & Associates, Anna P. Mantakou, the Managing Partner of Dr. Anna P. Montakou Law Office, Heidi Merikalla-Teir, Head Secretary of the Finnish Arbitration Institute, and Tamara Abova, head of civil and arbitration process sector, Doctor in law, professor of the Institute of state and law of the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as the ICAC, Maritime Arbitration Commission and RAA arbitrator.
As a part of the conference the annual meeting of RAA members has also been convened, during which the participants have reviewed the results of RAA’s work during the year 2016. The Managing partner of KIAP, Andrey Korelskiy, has been a member of the Board of RAA along with other leading experts in international arbitration since 2015.