Editor's Picks: Eight Previously Unpublished CRCICA Awards Have Been Included in the ICCA Awards Series 2025

The first update of the ICCA Awards Series 2025, featuring eight previously unpublished Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (CRCICA) awards and related decisions, is now available on Kluwer Arbitration.

The published awards deal with a broad range of issues, including the extension of arbitration agreements to non-signatories, an arbitral tribunal’s jurisdiction over non-contractual claims, the interpretation of conflicting arbitration clauses, the management of parallel court and arbitration proceedings, and the res judicata effect of prior arbitral awards or court judgments, as well as with matters of contractual interpretation, prescription periods, burden of proof, cost allocation, and force majeure.

For example, in an award dealing with a dispute brought by a manufacturer against its distributor and the distributor’s major shareholder over unpaid products, the arbitral tribunal found that the distributor’s major shareholder was not bound by the arbitration agreement despite significant ownership, as the shareholder’s participation and consent in the underlying distribution contract between the manufacturer and the distributor were not sufficiently demonstrated. While non-signatories can be bound to arbitration agreements through implied consent, this requires clear evidence of involvement in the contract containing the arbitration clause, which was lacking in the present case.

In another award, the arbitral tribunal ruled on a construction dispute governed by a subcontract agreement and general terms containing conflicting arbitration clauses. The tribunal considered that this was not in itself a ground for the clauses’ invalidity, finding that the arbitration clause in the subcontract agreement prevailed, because it was posterior and specific, and because the general terms and the subcontract agreement provided that the subcontract agreement prevailed in case of inconsistency.

The published arbitral decisions also shed light on the application by arbitral tribunals of the 2011 CRCICA Arbitration Rules.

In a dispute concerning the performance of an escrow agreement, the arbitral tribunal, after issuing an award by majority, dealt with two requests for interpretation pursuant to Article 37, a request for correction pursuant to Article 38, and a request for additional award pursuant to Article 39 of the 2011 CRCICA Arbitration Rules. In rejecting them, the tribunal consistently stressed how these requests cannot be used by the parties as a pretext to reopen or reargue matters that have been dealt with and decided by the tribunal, but are rather aimed, in the case of interpretation, at clarifying any ambiguity or obscurity in the award that cause uncertainty over the tribunal’s decision; in the case of correction, at correcting any computation or clerical error, or any error of a similar nature; and in the case of additional awards, at deciding claims raised in the arbitration but not decided in the award.

More CRCICA awards are available accessing the ICCA Awards Series on Kluwer Arbitration.