The Legal Effects of the Libyan State’s Accession to the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards

The Legal Effects of the Libyan State’s Accession to the 1958 New York Convention

Abstract

The 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards is considered one of the most successful and widely adopted international agreements in the field of international commercial arbitration. This is due to the procedural rules it established, which aim to facilitate the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards and to reduce the obstacles that traditionally hindered their enforcement before national courts.

Despite the Convention’s global scope, it does not set uniform substantive standards for the enforcement of arbitral awards. Rather, it allows for the refusal of recognition and enforcement whenever the party against whom the award is invoked proves the existence of one of the grounds for refusal listed exhaustively in Article V. Furthermore, Article VII of the Convention grants contracting parties the right to benefit from any more favorable legal or contractual regime for the enforcement of arbitral awards, whether deriving from bilateral or regional agreements, or from the domestic law of the state where enforcement is sought.

This study addresses the legal implications of Libya’s accession to the New York Convention, analyzes the scope of its application and the exceptions it provides, and examines the impact of this accession on the Libyan legal framework for the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards.