Author: WaelBadawy
How to Make Your Business Plan Stand Out ?
One of the first steps to business planning is determining your target market and why they would want to buy from you.
For example, is the market you serve the best one for your product or service? Are the benefits of dealing with your business clear and are they aligned with customer needs? If you’re unsure about the answers to any of these questions, take a step back and revisit the foundation of your business plan.
The following tips can help you clarify what your business has to offer, identify the right target market for it and build a niche for yourself.
Be Clear About What You Have to Offer
Ask yourself: Beyond basic products or services, what are you really selling? Consider this example: Your town probably has several restaurants all selling one fundamental product—food. But each is targeted at a different need or clientele.
One might be a drive-thru fast food restaurant, perhaps another sells pizza in a rustic Italian kitchen, and maybe there’s a fine dining seafood restaurant that specializes in wood-grilled fare. All these restaurants sell meals, but they sell them to targeted clientele looking for the unique qualities each has to offer. What they are really selling is a combination of product, value, ambience and brand experience.
When starting a business, be sure to understand what makes your business unique. What needs does your product or service fulfill? What benefits and differentiators will help your business stand out from the crowd?
Don’t Become a Jack of All Trades-Learn to Strategize
It’s important to clearly define what you’re selling. You do not want to become a jack-of-all trades and master of none because this can have a negative impact on business growth. As a smaller business, it’s often a better strategy to divide your products or services into manageable market niches. Small operations can then offer specialized goods and services that are attractive to a specific group of prospective buyers.
Identify Your Niche
Creating a niche for your business is essential to success. Often, business owners can identify a niche based on their own market knowledge, but it can also be helpful to conduct a market survey with potential customers to uncover untapped needs. During your research process, identify the following:
Which areas your competitors are already well-established
Which areas are being ignored by your competitors
Potential opportunities for your business
Why Mediate or Arbitrate?
The Price of anything is the amount of life you pay for it. – Henry David Thoreau
Why Mediate or Arbitrate?: Participants in mediation or arbitration voluntarily submit to these processes. People who arbitrate or mediate realize that conflict has its costs. Costs include:
Financial Price
o Attorney Fees
o Lost Productivity
o Time Lost
Physical Price
o Stress-related Illness
o Accidents
o Lack of Sleep
Intellectual Price
o Adversarial Assumptions
o Mistakes
o Failures
Emotional Price
o Anger
o Distrust
o Fear
o Grief
o Pain
Social Price
o Broken Relationships
o Distracted from Meaningful, Desired Relationships
o Risk of Escalation
o Loss of Family
Spiritual/Heart Price
o Surrendering to Bad Character
o Imbalance
o Values Warped
o Loss of Joy, Love and Hope
Systemic Price
o Dysfunction
o False Polarization
o Lost Opportunities
You have better things to do. Through mediation and arbitration, you can control and reduce the costs of conflict. Parties to mediation and arbitration can control the time it takes to resolve a dispute.
Consider the alternative. Litigation can be forced on a person. If you are sued you have to respond or you will suffer an adverse judgment. Attorneys must be hired. Litigation is an adversarial process in which each party attempts to out maneuver and gain the upper hand. Conflict, with is costs, escalates. The court imposes its deadlines. The parties have little control of the costs, timeline or outcome. In the end, the Court imposes an outcome which might not meet the needs or desires of either party. In litigation the parties lose control. In mediation the parties retain control over the outcome.
When litigation is threatened or even after it has started, you can always suggest the alternatives of mediation or arbitration or a court appointed referee.
What is Mediation? Mediation is facilitated negotiation. Mediation seeks a mutually beneficial solution. Parties discuss their values and motivations. Solutions evolve as parties understand each other, gain knowledge and explore resources. A trained mediator facilitates the meetings. The mediator remains neutral and does not make decisions for the parties. The dispute is settled only if parties are in agreement.
Is Mediation Effective? Studies of mediation of domestic disputes show 95% of participants did not believe mediation would work before they began. Yet 71% reached agreement on some, if not all, the issues they faced. Doubt is normal and does not predict the outcome of mediation. Divorced couples who had a judge decide the outcome of their divorce are 7-8 times more likely to bring future disputes to the court than those who mediated.
Is Mediation for Everyone? If a person is afraid to be in the same room as the other party or does not feel able to speak up or disagree with them, mediation might not be appropriate. Such concerns should be shared with the party’s attorney and mediator before mediation sessions.
What Happens During Mediation? Generally the mediator opens the session with an introduction. Rules for the discussion are established. Issues are identified. The parties may be invited to state what they want and why. Discussions follow. The mediator summarizes agreements reached.
Types of Mediation: The extent to which the mediator directs the outcome of mediation varies from mediator to mediator. On one end of the continuum are mediators who refuse to interject their opinions into the process. On the other extreme a mediator might evaluate the evidence and arguments of the parties and recommend a specific outcome. In some mediation sessions the parties stay in constant contact with each other. In other mediations, the mediator uses a process called caucuses. A caucus is a meeting with the mediator and just one side to the dispute. The mediator may shuffle between separate rooms where the parties are and communicate information, listen, ask questions and discuss the arguments and evidence presented by the other side. The type of mediation used depends upon the mediator, the issues to be decided, and the desires of the parties.
What is Arbitration? Arbitration has been described as “rent a judge.” A neutral person is hired who reviews evidence and renders a decision. Under Iowa law, an arbitrator’s decision can become a decision of a court and is enforced is a similar fashion. Subpoenas are available to compel witnesses and evidence to be brought to the arbitrator for decision.
What are the Advantages of Arbitration? Some of the benefits of Arbitration include:
a) The parties can agree to control the costs and time necessary to resolve a dispute;
b) Arbitrators are legally trained to make judicial decisions based upon law and evidence. The risks of a biased or an emotionally driven decision is less when compared to juries.
c) An Arbitrator can also be asked to investigate and collect the evidence. The costs and time necessary for a dispute is greatly reduced. See the article on Investigative Binding Arbitration.
d) Arbitrators with special technical expertise can be hired to reduce the risk of error.
e) A case can be handled piecemeal. For example, in an auto accident case the arbitrator can first determine if the defendants are responsible to pay any damages. Only if a defendant is responsible will there be need to incur the cost of presenting additional evidence about damages.
f) The parties can agree to a less formal process and allow evidence to be presented by summaries, reports, or other convenient means.
Referees can play an important role high conflict divorces. Since parties share parenting responsibilities even after the divorce, the potential for ongoing bitter disputes and new disputes is great. In high conflict divorces, the parties find it impossible to resolve minor disputes. The cost and delay of going to court results in escalation of conflict as the parties battle against each other for control and influence over the children. The children suffer in the midst of parental conflict. The court can give a referee authority to hear, investigate and decide such disputes. Decisions can be made in days rather than 7 to 12 months it normally takes in litigation.
In summary, to avoid investing an undue amount of your life in conflict, try mediation, arbitration and special masters.
How to Test Niche Markets
Looking to start making money from a new blog or website? Often the best way to do this is to create a product or to sell an affiliate product – and often the most popular type of product for marketers is a digital product.
Digital products include eBooks, online courses, reports and other files and software. The great thing about these is that they have no overheads, no delivery and no storage costs; all of which means you can start making money and keeping the profit as soon as you have an audience. There’s no manufacturing to consider and you won’t need to hire a warehouse.
But while this might sound like a license to print money, it’s important to consider the amount of work involved in creating a website or blog and building a big audience for it. The very real danger here to consider is that you could spend years creating a website and building it up, only to then find that you can’t make any money from it anyway!
The brilliance behind this is that it lets you start testing your niche right away, before you’ve invested lots of time creating your own niche or building up your audience. This is what you call ‘verifying’ your business model, before you spend time and money creating it.
How to Get Started
To get started, you can find things to sell and sell them however you wish. What you’re then going to do is set up a landing page and try running Facebook ad campaigns to direct some relevant traffic there.
A good eBook should only set you back a few hundred dollars at most and you will be able to recoup this over time. Why not create a few landing pages with a few different products to test which markets are ‘hot’ before you spend lots of time and money creating your own audience?
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The Top Types of Website/Blog You Hadn’t Considered Creating
If you’re planning on creating a website or a blog, then there’s a good chance you’re considering one of the major niches like ‘fitness’, ‘making money’ or ‘dating’.
The only problem is, these ‘big’ types of blogs are very overcrowded and if you create a new site in that niche you’re going to be going up against a lot of already established competition.
So the question is: how do you stand out with something completely new? And what other types of blog are there that you hadn’t considered?
Instead of going with a very generic and very derivative topic, why not try making something entirely new so that you will be more memorable for your visitors and so that you’ll be able to monetize in more creative ways? Read on and we’ll take a look at some of the top types of website and blog that you perhaps hadn’t already considered…
Fan Sites
Creating a fan site is a great strategy for a number of reasons. For starters, there doesn’t tend to be that much competition – particularly when compared with the bigger niches. At the same time, creating a fan site means you’ll be creating content for a highly committed and passionate audience that likely has a strong community. Head over to the ‘Doctor Who’ Google+ pages and you will see there are people there ready to eat up new content.
Career Content
Don’t have a hobby or interest? You probably at least have a job and probably that job is something that many other people share. There’s all kinds of information you can create in this field!
Education
You can create a lot of novel type of content in the education niche. This can range from teaching other adults a new topic as you learn it, to providing research materials for students. Or why not go one step further and create a website for children? Do bear in mind though, that this will mean selling to the parents rather than the children themselves.
Entertainment
Not every website has to be serious! While it’s harder in some respects, you can potentially be very successful with a website that’s funny or that publishes fiction. Just look at things like XKCD!
Broad Niches
A niche can also be broad enough to encompass multiple other niches. Think of magazines like ‘Men’s Health’ or ‘Wired’. These focus on a lifestyle rather than a strict niche and cover lots of topics together as a result.
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How to Brief a Case Using the “IRAC” Method
When briefing a case, your goal is to reduce the information from the case into a format that will provide you with a helpful reference for review. Most importantly, by “briefing” a case, you will grasp the problem the court faced (the issue); the relevant law the court used to solve it (the rule); how the court applied the rule to the facts (the application or “analysis”); and the outcome (the conclusion). You will then be ready to not only discuss the case, but to compare and contrast it to other cases involving a similar issue.
Before attempting to “brief” a case, read the case at least once. Follow the “IRAC” method in briefing cases:
Facts*
Write a brief summary of the facts as the court found them to be. Eliminate facts that are not relevant to the court’s analysis. For example, a business’s street address is probably not relevant to the court’s decision of the issue of whether the business that sold a defective product is liable for the resulting injuries to the plaintiff. However, suppose a customer who was assaulted as she left its store is suing the business. The customer claims that her injuries were the reasonably foreseeable result of the business’s failure to provide security patrols. If the business is located in an upscale neighborhood, then perhaps it could argue that its failure to provide security patrols is reasonable. If the business is located in a crime-ridden area, then perhaps the customer is right. Instead of including the street address in the case brief, you may want to simply describe the type of neighborhood in which it is located. (Note: the time of day would be another relevant factor in this case, among others).
Procedural History*
What court authored the opinion: The United States Supreme Court? The California Court of Appeal? The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? (Hint: Check under the title of the case: The Court and year of the decision will be given). If a trial court issued the decision, is it based on a trial, or motion for summary judgment, etc.? If an appellate court issued the decision, how did the lower courts decide the case?
Issue
What is the question presented to the court? Usually, only one issue will be discussed, but sometimes there will be more. What are the parties fighting about, and what are they asking the court to decide? For example, in the case of the assaulted customer, the issue for a trial court to decide might be whether the business had a duty to the customer to provide security patrols. The answer to the question will help to ultimately determine
* This applies to case briefs only, and not exams. Use the IRAC method in answering exams: Issue/Rule/Analysis/Conclusion.
whether the business is liable for negligently failing to provide security patrols: whether the defendant owed plaintiff a duty of care, and what that duty of care is, are key issues in negligence claims.
Rule(s):
Determine what the relevant rules of law are that the court uses to make its decision. These rules will be identified and discussed by the court. For example, in the case of the assaulted customer, the relevant rule of law is that a property owner’s duty to prevent harm to invitees is determined by balancing the foreseeability of the harm against the burden of preventive measures. There may be more than one relevant rule of law to a case: for example, in a negligence case in which the defendant argues that the plaintiff assumed the risk of harm, the relevant rules of law could be the elements of negligence, and the definition of “assumption of risk” as a defense. Don’t just simply list the cause of action, such as “negligence” as a rule of law: What rule must the court apply to the facts to determine the outcome?
Application/Analysis:
This may be the most important portion of the brief. The court will have examined the facts in light of the rule, and probably considered all “sides” and arguments presented to it. How courts apply the rule to the facts and analyze the case must be understood in order to properly predict outcomes in future cases involving the same issue. What does the court consider to be a relevant fact given the rule of law? How does the court interpret the rule: for example, does the court consider monetary costs of providing security patrols in weighing the burden of preventive measures? Does the court imply that if a business is in a dangerous area, then it should be willing to bear a higher cost for security? Resist the temptation to merely repeat what the court said in analyzing the facts: what does it mean to you? Summarize the court’s rationale in your own words. If you encounter a word that you do not know, use a dictionary to find its meaning.
Conclusion
What was the final outcome of the case? In one or two sentences, state the court’s ultimate finding. For example, the business did not owe the assaulted customer a duty to provide security patrols.
Learn to Master Your Niche Research Skills
If you want to succeed in any given niche, then you need to offer something different that the competition isn’t already offering. This is how you stand out as different and memorable and this is how you make links ‘clickable’ and sharable.
But coming up with new content is hard. Especially in a crowded niche where there are thousands of new articles published every day!
Moreover, you’re going to have to do your research if you want to appear accurate, reliable and trustworthy too. So how do you go about mastering your research skills so that you can really stand out? You read on, that’s how!
Your Inspiration
The more information you take in, the more inspiration you put out. Without meaning to get too philosophical here, most psychologists now agree that there’s no such thing as a truly ‘original’ idea. Instead, our ideas are created when we combine different ideas we already had.
So the more information you are taking in on a regular basis, the more bits of data you will have available to recombine into something brand new.
And this shouldn’t just mean reading on the topics that you’re writing about either. Reading on different topics is also important as this way you can bring related knowledge in from other fields or combine subjects in order to come up with something completely new.
What’s more, reading other blogs and websites can give you ideas for structuring articles or spinning them that you can apply to your own work in new ways. Like that article on how to dress like a bodybuilder? How about taking it and applying it to your own niche for an article on ‘how to dress like an entrepreneur’?
Great places to get ideas and material then include:
- Websites
- Blogs
- Magazines
- Books
- TV
Subscribe to some RSS feeds and keep reading!
Looking for News
It’s also important to try and stay up-to-date by following the latest news and developments. This sometimes means going straight to the source, which can mean reading journal studies (look for them on Google Scholar) or looking at press releases (you can find sites that collect and publish these).
Taking it Further
The truly unique and interesting stuff though comes when you start going deeper and really researching into your topic. Often this begins with asking the right questions. When you next read an article telling you about a new discovery for instance, ask why that’s true. Why does that new workout routine work so well? And what if you were to turn it up a notch or introduce a new element?
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The Biggest Impacts of Choosing a Niche
When you pick the niche for your new site, you are actually picking much more than just a niche. This decision isn’t just going to affect what you’re writing about for the lifetime of your new business – it’s also going to impact very nature of your business model and the very fabric of your website…
It can’t be overstated just how important this is for the eventual success of your blog as a whole. So to demonstrate just what a profound impact this one decision will make, read on to see some of the top areas affected by your choice…
The Look
When you choose a niche, this will almost certainly impact the design of your logo. In turn, this is likely to spill over into the look of your site if you want to strengthen your brand identity. As a result, your web design will be heavily influenced by your choice of subject matter – which is why football sites tend to be green and technology sites tend to be white/blue/silver.
The Tone
The niche you choose is also going to dictate the tone of your site and the ‘voice’ you use. A website on lifestyle for instance might have a colloquial and ‘fun’ tone of voice, as though you are speaking directly to your audience. On the other hand though, a website on finance or on medicine is going to sound a lot more professional with far more terminology.
Your Audience
This is one of the biggest ways your niche will influence your business model: once you choose your topic, you will also have decided on the type of person who is likely to read your content. In turn, this will influence the types of interactions you have on your site, the amount of loyalty your audience displays and even their disposable income.
Monetization Options
The way you monetize your website will depend on which products and adverts are available. If you’re in the ‘make money’ niche for instance, you’ll find there are tons of eBooks and courses being sold on the topic and that people are willing to spend a lot of money here, viewing it as an investment.
But on the other hand, if you’re writing about your favourite TV show, there won’t be many things you can sell without facing copyright issues – which means you’ll likely make most of your money through Amazon sales.
How to Use Pen Names to Penetrate Multiple Niches
Choosing a niche is one of the most important things you have to do when you first set out to create a blog. A niche doesn’t just impact on what you’ll be writing: it impacts your target demographic (your audience), your web design, your earning potential, the types of products and adverts you can earn from and much more.
If you get your niche right from the start, you’ll find you can quickly rise to prominence as one of the top bloggers and start earning a lot of stable income. Get it wrong and you might find that you struggle to get noticed, or that there’s no money to be made even when you start making progress.
So instead of stressing about it and letting this decision stall your progress… why not just enter multiple niches right from the start?
The Benefits of Entering More Than One Niche
There are plenty of very good reasons to try entering more than one niche and this is something that can help any blogger.
For starters, being in more than one niche is fun. It means you aren’t constantly writing content on the same topic and you won’t find you get bored of your ‘day job’ too quickly.
What’s more, being in multiple niches at once gives you resilience. In business terms, ‘resilience’ basically means that your business model is stable enough that a single thing going wrong won’t be devastating for your company. In other words, if you’re in more than one niche, it doesn’t matter if one of your websites – or even one of those industries – stops being profitable.
And on top of all this, with multiple niches you will have multiple different audiences and multiple different opportunities to start making money online.
Using a Pen Name
So how do you enter into these different niches?
One thing that can help is having more than one pen name to use on the web. Why? Because that way, your efforts in one area won’t negatively impact your efforts in another.
Having multiple blogs all on different subjects and using the same name could look as though you’re a ‘Jack of All Trades’ and expert at none. It could appear as though you’re just interested in making money rather than having a real passion for what you’re writing about. Finally, it prevents you from referencing or linking to your other blogs without it appearing biased.
So come up with a few names and enjoy writing on multiple subjects simultaneously!
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Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in the Arab world
Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms in the Arab world have been growing hand in hand with the resurgence of various countries as members of the fast growing club of successful emerging markets. The flexibility of arbitration, mediation and other ADR methods, as well as their speed, efficiency and confidentiality, have made them more attractive to investors and parties in contracts of an international nature. Consequently, a significant number of Arab countries have been busy updating and enhancing their laws and regulations on arbitration and mediation in particular. There is momentum behind ADR in the region.
Furthermore, the global economic downturn has led to a significant increase in the number of disputes in various sectors, and this in turn has provided an impetus behind the need to enhance the procedures applied by the various arbitration centers in the Arab world.
This development is not solely linked to the realities of modern commerce. In fact, the conciliatory approach and the notion of deferring to a neutral and objective personality for a decision, that ultimately underline all forms of ADR, are well steeped in Arabic and Islamic traditions.
There are at least two verses in the Koran that sanction the notion of arbitration and mediation. Furthermore, one of the most famous stories of the Prophet Mohammad’s early life involved him being chosen by feuding tribes, who could not agree on a vital element of the reconstruction of the Ka’aba, to resolve the dispute. The Prophet bridged the gaps between the quarreling parties by suggesting an original solution that was essentially a win-win for all. Other examples of arbitration and mediation abound in Islamic history.
At the outset, let us distinguish between mediation and arbitration. There are a number of differences between those two mechanisms.
Firstly, these methods differ in terms of the role of the appointed third party; in arbitration, an arbitrator is like a judge and his or her decision is final, whereas in mediation, the mediator works to try and bridge the differences between the parties and move them closer a settlement or conciliation. In a sense, mediation is the preferred option when the parties are still attempting to resolve their differences in a way that would allow them to continue their working relationship; whereas, arbitration is usually sought in order to reach a final determination on the overall dispute at the end of the relationship.
Secondly, the authority of an arbitrator is much wider than that of the mediator.
Thirdly, there are differences in terms of time limits, and venue considerations, between the two methods. In essence, arbitration is an attempt to replicate the judicial process but in a manner that is more specialized and streamlined. Mediation is a process whereby the parties agree to nominate a third party who would be tasked with trying to find common ground between the parties and resolve their differences, usually through the organization of meetings which are of a rather informal nature, at least in comparison with arbitration proceedings.
Finally, one of the main advantages of mediation is that it is far less costly than arbitration. In fact, it can be said that the costs of arbitration are its Achilles heel.
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One of the most significant trends is the adoption of laws that deal specifically with mediation. In Jordan, the Law on Mediation for the Resolution of Civil Disputes was adopted in 2006. The law organizes the process of judicial mediation that takes place at the Court of First Instance. In accordance with Article 3 of the said law, the presiding judge may, upon the agreement of the parties or further to their request, refer the dispute to a mediating judge or a private mediator for the purposes of amicable resolution of the dispute. The mediator is then obliged by law to complete the mediation process within three months of the date on which the dispute was referred to him or her.
A similar development has taken place in the Emirate of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. By virtue of Dubai’s Law No. 16 of 2009, a Mediation Centre was established. The Mediation Centre will be annexed to Dubai’s Courts. The Centre is entrusted to review types of disputes that are defined by its Chairman. Disputes will be reviewed and amicably resolved through a number of experts, under the supervision, of the concerned judge, within a period that would not exceed one month from the date of the attendance of the parties before the judge.
The creation of such centers in Jordan and the UAE, as well as the existence of various mediation mechanisms through international organizations such the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Arbitration Centre, is likely to lead to a surge in the use of mediation as a method for the amicable resolution of disputes. This would be a welcome development, as it would entail the effective resolution of so many disputes in a conciliatory and timely manner, well before the matter escalates to reach a court room or an arbitration panel.
As for arbitration, we have also seen a number of positive trends in this regard in the Arab world. On the one hand, the trend towards the effective adoption of the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Arbitration Convention) has solidified. The New York Arbitration Convention mainly enshrines the principle that a properly made arbitration award in one member country must be binding and enforceable in another member country, unless the award can be rejected on the basis of certain grounds for refusal of enforcement, which are narrowly defined in the Convention. The Convention also confirms the principle that if a court is presented with a dispute which the parties had agreed to refer to arbitration, then the court must refer the matter to arbitration upon the request of one of the parties.
Historically, the rate of adoption of the New York Arbitration Convention in the Arab world has been good. Jordan was amongst the first countries to adopt the Convention, which came into effect in 1959. Almost all Arab countries have since joined, with Kuwait joining in 1978, Saudi Arabia in 1994 and, more recently, the United Arab Emirates in 2006.
The challenge is to ensure that the exceptions that would allow a member country to refuse the enforcement of an arbitral award are applied in a strict and narrow manner. Under Article V(2)(b) of the Convention, the enforcement of an arbitral award may be refused if “the recognition or enforcement of the award would be contrary to the public policy of that country.” The parameters of what a country regards as “public policy” can be wide. In Saudi Arabia, an arbitration agreement or award is respected provided that it is not contrary to the principles of Shari’a law. Such a limitation falls within the “public policy” exception, but the key lies in the way such an exception is applied.
In the UAE, Articles 235 and 236 of the Civil Procedures Law (Federal Law No. 11 of 1992) confirm the principle that foreign arbitral awards will be enforced in the country, provided a number of conditions are met. These include procedural issues such as the proper notification and representation of the parties before the arbitral tribunal that issues the decision in the foreign country. Also, UAE courts may refuse the enforcement of a foreign arbitral award if it contradicts a previous judgment already issued by a UAE court or if it includes elements that “contradict public policy or morals.”
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While in the past “public policy” exceptions have been defined in a wide manner that allowed courts to reject a number of foreign arbitration awards in various Arab countries, there is a discernible trend towards limiting the use of this exception, and applying it only in clear cases of contravention of the country’s moral or public policies.
Furthermore, in the recent past, various Arab countries have upgraded their arbitration laws to be in line with international best practices. This is evidenced by the increasing use of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration. This model law was drafted by the UNCITRAL with a view to assisting countries that seek to improve their laws in such a way as to ensure the best possible procedures for commercial arbitration.
For example, Egypt adopted Law No. 27 in 1994, the Commercial Arbitration Law, which is based on the UNCITRAL Model Law. This aimed to enhance arbitrations procedures and resolve complications that arose under the provisions that dealt with arbitrations in the Egyptian Code of Civil and Commercial Procedures and provide a law dedicated to arbitration. Also, in 1994, Bahrain adopted a new international arbitration law (Decree no. 9/1994) that was based on the UNCITRAL Model Law. In 2008, Syria issued an arbitration law that is based on the Model Law as well.
The UAE is also presently considering a new Federal arbitration law and it is widely reported that the new law would be based on the UNCITRAL Model Law. Once enacted, the new Federal arbitration Law will replace the existing provisions in the Civil Procedures Law.
Finally, there is no greater proof of the growing popularity and importance of arbitration than the increasing use of existing arbitration centers in the region, and the founding of new centers. The Dubai International Arbitration Center (DIAC), whose rules are UNCITRAL based, has proven to be an excellent success. The number of cases that the DIAC is handling has been growing at a very impressive rate. According to one report, while the number of new cases with the DIAC in 2008 was 100, there had been 180 new cases registered with DIAC by August 2009. The Cairo Regional Center for International Commercial Arbitration, which was established in 1979, continues to be a great success.
Earlier in January, Bahrain announced the launch of Bahrain Chamber of Dispute Resolution, in partnership with the American Arbitration Association. It is reported that the Chamber will operate what is being called an “arbitration free zone.”
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In conclusion, various Arab countries have engaged in an active process of upgrading their arbitration laws and those dealing with other alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. Arab arbitration centers are growing in significance, as more parties resort to the use of their services. These important developments can only serve to facilitate the infrastructure supporting international commercial contracts in the Arab world and, in turn, this will have very positive effects on investment and business growth in our region