A Model Harmonised International Arbitration Law Code for the Middle East and North Africa

The law codes in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region are a well-crafted blend of civil and Islamic law in which civil law principles do not violate Islamic provisions. Yet, common law principles derived either from English common law or Islamic customary usages remain unidentified and thus ignored. Here, this complex scenario is rectified through a comparative analysis of the primary data (e.g. cases, statutes and arbitral award decisions), adding common law and uncodified Islamic custom to MENA law codes.

The purpose of this comparative analysis is to allow common legal principles found in civil, common and Islamic law to be distilled in order to create a new, harmonised international commercial arbitration law code (HICALC) or uniform Arab arbitration law (UAAL) for adoption in the MENA region, where these principles already greatly influence the legal systems and can be readily assimilated into a harmonised or uniform code. The work demonstrates that this new code would lead to improved arbitral award enforcement in the MENA.