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Leading arbitration practitioners at Eurasian Arbitration Week 2026 explored practical strategies for enforcing arbitral awards, discussing Kazakhstan’s evolving arbitration framework, the AIFC Court, sanctions, judicial predictability and the growing importance of enforcement planning in cross-border disputes.
The panel examined the evolving role of artificial intelligence in arbitration, discussing its practical applications, ethical boundaries and the principles that should guide its responsible use.
Prof. Loukas Mistelis traced the evolution of the Queen Mary International Arbitration Survey over the past two decades, highlighting arbitration’s continued dominance in cross-border disputes, Asia’s growing influence, user expectations, and the transformative role of artificial intelligence.
Lawrence Teh highlighted the importance of institutional trust, judicial restraint, and cultural understanding in international arbitration, while encouraging Kazakhstan to build an arbitral identity rooted in its own strengths rather than replicating existing models.
From representations and warranties disputes to fraud, earn-outs, mediation and investment arbitration, panellists at the International Arbitration Centre’s Eurasia Arbitration Week 2026 discussed why cross-border M&A disputes arise and how businesses can better structure transactions to prevent and resolve them.
by Sanjeev Kapoor*, Dhritiman Roy** and Sania Abbasi***
At the International Arbitration Centre Eurasia Arbitration Week 2026 in Astana, Kazakhstan, speakers examined the role of courts and arbitral institutions, the interaction between different legal traditions, settlement and mediation in arbitration, and the future development of arbitration in Eurasia.
Delivering the keynote address at Eurasian Arbitration Week 2026, Gary Born examined the evolution of international arbitration from ancient civilisations to the modern legal order, arguing that arbitration has always been rooted in party autonomy, contractual freedom and the pursuit of peaceful dispute resolution.
The judgment reinforces the finality of foreign arbitral awards in India and provides greater certainty for investors and commercial parties, particularly in sectors such as energy, infrastructure and natural resources, by limiting enforcement-stage challenges based on public policy grounds.
From the opacity of Bar Council rules on foreign lawyers to enforcement gaps and AI’s irreducibly human element, six practitioners discussed what it will take for the India-UK dispute resolution corridor to fulfil its potential.
At the ICA Conference in London, Deputy High Commissioner Kartik Pande underscored the importance of arbitration and ADR in supporting the growing India—UK economic partnership and fostering commercial confidence in cross-border trade and investment.
A technical session at the ICA Conference on “Arbitrating Indo-UK Commercial Disputes” highlighted that while hybrid ADR frameworks are gaining traction, corporate users remain cautious about mediation’s role in high-value disputes, and arbitration, despite concerns of cost and complexity, continues to be the preferred mechanism for certainty and enforceability in Indo-UK commerce.
At the UK Supreme Court, Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant urged modern legal systems to shift from “forum convenience” to “process convenience,” positioning mediation as the next frontier of commercial justice while reaffirming the complementary role of courts and arbitration.
In 1774, Lord Mansfield observed that ‘in all mercantile transactions the great object should be certainty.’ Two hundred and fifty years later, Arun Chawla, Director General of ICA, used that same principle to frame the case for arbitration as the silent infrastructure of globalisation and for the India-UK economic partnership’s dependence on credible dispute resolution institutions.
If the AI systems driving arbitral decisions are trained on materials from other jurisdictions, the awards they generate may be unenforceable or worse, systematically biased. Sir Geoffrey Vos used his keynote at the ICA’s 4th Indo-UK Commercial Disputes Conference to draw a line between AI in arbitration, where party consent makes adoption feasible, and AI in courts, where constitutional legitimacy makes it impossible.
A sanctions designation in Washington can simultaneously trigger a force majeure notice in Singapore, a MAC dispute in London and a valuation fight in a treaty arbitration. Five practitioners at LIDW 2026 examined each front, and found the same issue at the centre of every one: causation.
India’s mediation tradition predates its legislation by millennia. England’s mediation culture was built by judicial pressure and adverse costs. At LIDW 2026, practitioners from both jurisdictions found more agreement than disagreement and a shared frustration with what arbitration has become.
Reflecting on nearly five decades in the legal profession, from manual typewriters to AI, Sir Geoffrey warned that the competition to develop national AI capabilities is simultaneously a competition to preserve the influence of established legal systems, and that courts which resist this reality risk making themselves irrelevant.
Can arbitration deliver better value than litigation? At LIDW 2026, leading practitioners debated proportionality, cost recovery, case management and procedural innovations, concluding that efficient dispute resolution depends less on the forum chosen and more on the decisions made by clients, counsel, tribunals and institutions.
At LIDW26, Mr. Sean West examined how geopolitical fragmentation, legal uncertainty and rapid advances in artificial intelligence are creating an increasingly “unruly” world and reshaping the future of international dispute resolution.