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Vol. 44 (2024)
General Articles

Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitral Awards in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq: Could There Be a Region-specific Approach to International Arbitration?

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  • Julia Sochacka
Julia Sochacka
University of Warsaw

Published 2025-11-14

Keywords

  • international arbitration,
  • enforcement of arbitral awards,
  • Egypt,
  • Saudi Arabia,
  • Iraq,
  • regional approaches to international arbitration
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitral Awards in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq: Could There Be a Region-specific Approach to International Arbitration?. (2025). Polish Yearbook of International Law, 44, 155-176. https://doi.org/10.24425/PYIL.2025.156718

Abstract

Arbitration award enforcement proceedings are the crucial point of any 
dispute, as even the most groundbreaking award is pointless if it cannot be executed. 
The issue of the enforceability of awards is especially interesting in the region usually 
omitted from discussions on alternative dispute resolution: West Asia and North 
Africa. Usually portrayed as a monolith, the Arab states counter this assumption by 
taking on a highly nuanced and jurisdiction-specific approach to international arbi
tration. This paper presents snippets of recognition and enforcement legislation and 
the case law from three states: Egypt, characterised by its active engagement in inter
national arbitration; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, traditionally vested in the legal 
tradition of Islamic law; and Iraq, which only recently acceded to the international 
award implementation system. These examples are employed to determine whether 
there are any region-specific similarities in domestic courts’ reasoning on international 
arbitration. The legislation and cases analysed herein provide a unique outlook on 
these underrepresented jurisdictions, characterised by firm attachment to national 
law and legal tradition and subjected to global currents of economic liberalisation.

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