Bahrain Chamber for Dispute Resolution onwards and upwards

The Bahrain Chamber for Dispute Resolution (BCDR), recipient of the prestigious 2021 GAR Award for Regional Institution that Impressed, is seeing accelerating growth of its caseload.

Since its establishment in 2010, BCDR has administered 350 cases through the BCDR Court (claims valued above US$1.3m in which at least one party is a financial institution licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain, or the dispute is of an international commercial nature) and its international arbitration and mediation wing, BCDR-AAA.

The value of claims so far referred to BCDR exceeds US$6.2 billion.

In the twelve months to date, 57 new cases have been submitted to BCDR: 41 at the BCDR Court and 16 at BCDR-AAA. Filed in just one year, these new cases represent over 16% of BCDR's cumulative caseload.

A committed promoter of diversity in arbitration, BCDR seeks to achieve greater female representation on its tribunals and is pleased to report that almost 30% of the arbitrators that have been appointed to date are women, a percentage that it hopes to see steadily rising in the coming years. Moreover, its arbitrators so far appointed originate from countries as diverse as Armenia, Australia, Bahrain, Egypt, France, Italy, Lebanon, Singapore, Switzerland, Syria, UK, and US.

While BCDR's multilingual secretariat works diligently to maintain the excellence in its administrative services, BCDR continues in its role as a leader in education in the region and as the face of Bahrain at UNCITRAL.