“I was honoured to serve the global ADR community in 2025”

After countless keynote speeches, Branch conferences, commission dinners, discussion workshops, arbitration week appearances, and outreach and mentorship events across six continents and 26 jurisdictions, Ciarb’s 2025 President, Professor Dr. Mohamed Abdel Wahab C.Arb FCIArb, delivered the Alexander Lecture to much fanfare. Only a few days later, he was delivering the main lecture at the 2nd Doha Arbitration Day.  

As he winds down his presidency, we asked for his thoughts on the past year: his personal highlights, the initiatives he’s most proud of, the lessons learned, and what he’s looking forward to in the months ahead.  

What have been your personal highlights as Ciarb President?  

My presidency has been quite intense and marked by several profound highlights that have reinforced my belief in the transformative power of dispute resolution. Among the notable highlights are:  

1. The sheer volume of high-level meetings, trainings, symposia and events that I was able to participate in and speak at across six continents, to the exclusion of Antarctica. 
   
   
2. Dispute Appointment Service (DAS) appointments reform, which included proceeding with more diverse appointees, considering the number of appointments each member of the presidential list received throughout the year, and working towards a more inclusive presidential list. 
   
   
3. Inaugurating the Presidential Advisory Board to assist future presidents with their mandate and to ensure that Ciarb continues to benefit from the wisdom, expertise and experience of good past presidents. 
   
   
4. Contributing to thought leadership in alternative dispute resolution (ADR) through various keynote speeches delivered across four continents.
    
5. Working towards strengthening Ciarb’s brand and expanding its global reach, particularly in regions where access to justice and professional ADR services were previously limited. This was indeed impactful through engaging in dialogues with judicial authorities, state officials, private practitioners and in-house counsel regarding the role of Ciarb in ADR training and capacity building. Having travelled to distant localities, it was particularly warming to engage with our diverse membership and to witness the passion of young practitioners entering the field and discussing how Ciarb can help.  
    

What are the initiatives you're most proud of?  

The theme of my presidency was ‘capacity building, global inclusion and thought leadership’, and six initiatives stand out: 

1. Establishing Ciarb’s Presidential Advisory Board. 
   
   
2. Creating and developing Ciarb’s Global Anti-Corruption Roundtable Series as a multi-city, multi-stakeholder initiative designed to ignite candid and solutions-oriented discussions on corruption risks and anti-corruption efforts within the ADR world. This convenes Ciarb thought leaders, policymakers, judges, legal practitioners, and arbitrators to confront one of the most critical challenges facing dispute resolution today, with a common goal of identifying region-specific challenges in detecting, preventing, and addressing corruption, showcasing best practices and success stories from an array of legal and regulatory contexts, facilitating multi-stakeholder collaboration among ADR practitioners, policymakers, and members of the judiciary, and developing actionable, practitioner-oriented recommendations for Ciarb to develop training, standards and resources that will strengthen integrity and ethical practices within ADR. 
   
   
3. Collaborating with Ciarb Lebanon Branch to convene the global conference on Rebuilding Lebanon: Investment Framework, Business Opportunities, and Dispute Resolution under the Patronage of His Excellency the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Nawaf Salam. This event was more than a conference; it was a forum that brought together more than 600 ministers, members of parliament, government officials, judges and justices, diplomats, business community leaders and members of the legal profession to exchange views on sustainable development and to reaffirm a creed: that the rule of law, institutional reform, productive dialogue, sustainable development, and equity are necessities for humanity and our world order. It demonstrated that rebuilding must be juridical and not just physical because infrastructure without the rule of law is erosion. This conference marked a new era and role for Ciarb, which, in rebuilding nations, speaks the language of engineers, accountants, economists, quantity surveyors – 55% of Ciarb members are non-legal professionals – and legal practitioners. 
   
   
4. Publishing Ciarb’s Guideline on the Use of AI in Arbitration. This was both timely and reflective of a need to offer some guidance on the integration of AI as a disruptive force into arbitration.  
    
5.  Supporting the development of talent from Ciarb’s younger members through one-to-one mentoring sessions and providing career and professional development advice as and when sought, especially from under-represented and under-privileged communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. 
   
   
6. Developing a more transparent, inclusive and process-based approach to DAS appointments.

What are the most important lessons you've learned during your Presidency?  

Numerous lessons have been learned, but the ones that stand out are that: 

• Leadership in a global organisation requires vision, goal setting and humility
  
  
• ADR professionals, no matter who they are and what they do, don’t operate in a vacuum, and we share a lot in common. We remain committed to a core set of values that define us and inform our work. These promote legitimacy, trust and confidence in what we do
  
  
• Collaboration is key, and the most effective solutions emerge when we bring together diverse perspectives. We can think together without needing to think alike, and we do not need to be the same nor speak the same language to appreciate that we are facing the same challenges and we must devise global solutions to our common problems 
  
  
• Agility and adaptability are instrumental to the sustainability of an organisation
  
  
• Listening is as important as leading, and engaging with members, hearing their concerns, and understanding regional challenges are key to Ciarb’s future as a membership organisation
  
  
• In every challenge lies an opportunity for growth
  
  
• Learning and education is a journey that never stops

What, if anything, would you have done differently?  

Reflection is indeed essential for growth and development. Looking back, I may say that I would have welcomed planning much earlier for the initiatives and activities that I pursued in 2025. 

During my year as President, I believe I managed to do a lot, and that involved more than 105 speaking engagements (inclusive of 21 keynote speeches) across six continents. Nevertheless, I would have liked having more than 24 hours a day and more than 365 days so I could do more.  
 

What are you looking forward to in the year ahead?  

I am looking forward to continuing what I started and to building on what has been achieved. More specifically, I would like to continue to contribute to thought leadership, training, mentoring and educating young professionals, and excelling in delivering quality legal services, whether as arbitrator, counsel, academic or international judge as part of the Bahrain International Commercial Court.  

I also hope to continue to contribute to building deeper collaborations between credible international institutions and professionals to facilitate a more inclusive global ADR ecosystem.  

Finally, I hope to be able to continue with my own professional development (which is always a journey and never a destination), to contribute to the academic discourse on international arbitration, and to help shape and support the development of best practices in international arbitration. 

What is the biggest opportunity you see for Ciarb? 

The biggest opportunity lies in positioning Ciarb as the global leader and the go-to institution for quality education and state-of-the-art training in ADR and AI in ADR. This requires diversifying programme offerings, revolutionising training curriculums, and elevating the discourse of thought leadership through producing cutting-edge research on topical issues and publishing guidance notes and guidelines on best practices across all areas of ADR.  

As a global membership organisation, Ciarb is well-placed to increase its presence and membership in under-represented regions in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Eastern Europe. As the world continues to need dispute resolution professionals, Ciarb has immense opportunities.  

I was honoured to serve the global ADR community in 2025, and I hope to continue to be of useful service in various other capacities in the years to come.