Dan Nshokano Kashironge (Vrije Universiteit Brussel): Enforcement of Arbitral Awards against States: Exploring the Limits of Uniform Laws

About the speaker:
Dan Nshokano Kashironge is a Doctoral Researcher in International Law at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB); and practices law as a Consultant in Arbitration & ADR at MERCALEX, a law firm based in DR Congo and operating in the OHADA and East African Community regions. He is also an Adjunct Lecturer in DR Congo and currently serves as the Research Director at the Citizen’s Information and Documentation Center (Cidoc) based in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). Dan holds an LLB (ANU, Kenya), an LLM in International Business Law (ULB, Brussels) and various certificates, notably a Certificate in Private International Law (The Hague Academy of International Law, The Netherlands).

About the topic:
Dan will reflect upon the limits of the uniformization of laws on arbitration through the 1958 New York Arbitration Convention. More specifically, he will explore the complexity of enforcing arbitral awards against States, despite the uniformization of both laws on enforcement of arbitral awards (the 1958 New York Arbitration Convention) and practices regarding the restrictive approach to sovereign immunity (as reflected in comparative law and the 2004 UN Convention on State Immunity). Drawing on a series of cases opposing the company FG Hemisphere to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), he will attempt to demonstrate the fact that the effectiveness of investor-State arbitration does not just depend on the power of the arbitral tribunal to issue legally binding decisions, or on the existence of uniform legal provisions on their enforcement, but it also and most importantly depends on the willingness of States to give full effect to such decisions.

About the virtual workshop series:
There is a growing interest in the study of private international law in Africa. In an environment of growing international transactions in both civil and commercial matters, private international law can play a significant role in Africa in addressing issues such as globalization, regional economic integration, immigration, etc. The series intends to discuss new scholarly work on private international law in Africa and advance solutions on how the current framework of that field can be improved on the continent.