Aribtration Interactive in Mongolia
From September 13 to 16, 2004, Stefan Georg Hoffmann, Editorial Manager of Arbitration Interactive and former Senior Research Fellow at CENTRAL conducted a seminar based on “Arbitration Interactive” in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia.
The Seminar was funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Berlin Business Development Corporation and the Foundation for Economic Development and Vocational Training (SEQUA). It was organized under the auspices of the Mongolian National Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Department of Law and Arbitration and the Mongolian National Center for Legal and Judicial Researches, Training and Information. The initiative came from Ms. Maralgoo Dashdoorov who had attended the 1st CENTRAL/DIS Cologne Summer Academy on International Arbitration while she was working as an intern with the head office of the German Institution of Arbitration (“DIS”) in Cologne in 2003.
The workshop held in the recently build National Legal Center in Ulaanbaatar was attended by 30 participants from Mongolia, among them attorneys, arbitrators and secretaries of the regional Chambers of Commerce. Prior to the seminar participants received the case study which forms the basis of “Arbitration Interactive” and the DIS Arbitration Rules both of which had been translated in the Mongolian language. During the workshop participants discussed practical and legal aspects of arbitration against the business scenario of the case. They got involved interactively into the seminar when confronted with questions of the organisation of an arbitral process, the conduct of an arbitral hearing and witness examinations. At the end of the workshop, participants had to draft the factual and the operative part of an arbitral award.
Tumenjargal Mendsaikhan, Ph.D., the head of the Mongolian National Legal Training Center contributed with particularities of Mongolian judicial practice in his lecture on court assistance and court intervention in arbitration. In the light of his statements Stefan Georg Hoffmann intitiated an ad hoc round table discussion between the participants of the workshop and Mongolian judges on the nature and benefits of arbitration and the application of the Mongolian Arbitration Law in judicial practice.
The workshop in Ulaanbaatar is certainly one of the major “high”lights in the history of the project “Arbitration Interactive”, after all, Ulaambaatar is about 1.600 meters above see level.