Media

UNCITRAL drafter celebrates anniversary

Australasian Legal Business - September 2005

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Model Law of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), with two conferences being staged in Cairo and Singapore to celebrate.

Fellow of the Institute of Arbitrators & Mediators Australia Gavan Griffith QC, who led the committee on the drafting and settling of the text at the first UNCITRAL summit in Vienna in 1985, said: "After 20 years the Model Law has had the intended effect, now substantially realised, of levelling the arbitration playing field. As I have found out, international arbitrations may now as readily be conducted in Port Moresby, Islamabad or New Delhi as in London, Paris or Washington."

In a distinguished legal career, Griffith served as Australia's Solicitor General from 1984 to 1997. In a wide ranging written tribute to UNICTRAL, he described its original drafting as being "the blueprint for uniform legislative regimes by way of a proposed model law".

Australia adopted the entire UNCITRAL Model Law as a schedule to the Commonwealth Act in 1989.

We gratefully acknowledge the permission from Australasian Legal Business to reprint this article.