Originally from Investment Treaty Arbitration and International Law - Volume 18

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PANEL 4

DR. KABIR DUGGAL: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to panel four. The topic is “True or False: The Work of UNCITRAL Working Group III has or will Solve the So-called Legitimacy Crisis in Investment Arbitration.” That’s the topic we’re here to debate, and we really have put together a pretty outstanding set of speakers. Let’s stay tuned to hear all of them. Just before we begin, through a show of hands, and don’t overthink this, how many people actually agree that Working Group III has or will solve the legitimacy crisis? Through a show of hands? Not one hand in support of the motion that Working Group III will solve the legitimacy crisis. Okay, let’s start with this panel discussion. 

I am not going to introduce our speakers in any meaningful manner. We will be here all day. They have bios that are super impressive. I’m going to give you very brief introductions, but I will tell you a fun fact about them. So, our two authors, Yili, you can wave. Yili is a Partner at DER Juridik in Sweden. He’s a professor at Brunel and Durham and Penn State. I don’t want to look at your travel schedule but well done. And Yili’s fun fact is, he loves America’s Got Talent. Next to him is his co-author taking the opposite position. Isabella, she told me her name is spelled in a cute, wrong way, but that’s not a fun fact. Isabella joins us from LALIVE in Geneva. Isabella tells us a fun fact, she speaks Spanish with an Argentine accent. And then we have our four awesome experts who are going to debate this topic. And we’ll try to make this interactive time permitting. We have Caline Mouawad from Chaffetz Lindsey. Her fun fact, she goes as Kelly at Starbucks. I go as Tony in Starbucks. So, we have that going for us. Next to that, we have Nikhil Gore, who has come down from Washington, DC, Covington & Burling, his fun fact, his seat in his office, reflects a light that projects a halo over his head, which makes him the jolliest person during Christmas. That was the cool fun fact. On the other side we have Fahira Brodlija from GIZ, the German development organization coming from Bosnia. We’re very grateful to you. Fahira’s fun thing is, she loves basketball. 
And then we have Eric Ives. We actually have two organizations that deal with development programs. Eric joins us from the Department of Commerce’s CLDP, the Commercial Law Development Program, alumni of Columbia Law School. And he loves mountain climbing.