UAE Approves Accession to Singapore Convention on Mediation

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has approved its accession to the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation, commonly known as the Singapore Convention on Mediation, under Federal Decree No. 85 of 2026, issued on 8 June 2026.

The Convention establishes a framework under which parties may rely on and seek enforcement of international commercial settlement agreements resulting from mediation without having to commence separate proceedings to establish the underlying dispute. The Convention is applicable to written settlement agreements resulting from mediation that resolve a commercial dispute and fall within the Convention’s international scope.

The UAE has made the two reservations permitted under Article 8(1) of the Convention. The first excludes settlement agreements to which the UAE, its governmental agencies or persons acting on behalf of governmental agencies are parties. The second provides that the Convention applies only to the extent the parties to the settlement agreement have agreed to its application. The Convention itself excludes, among other matters, settlement agreements relating to consumer, family, inheritance and employment disputes, as well as agreements that are already enforceable as judgments or as arbitral awards.

Under Article 14, the Convention enters into force for an acceding State six months after the deposit of its instrument of accession with the United Nations. As of the latest UN Treaty Collection status, the UAE is not yet listed among the Convention’s Parties, and the participant list records no UAE accession. The Convention’s enforcement framework therefore does not yet operate in the UAE. Once it enters into force, applications for relief under the Convention will remain subject to the limited grounds for refusal set out in Article 5, including matters concerning the validity of the settlement agreement, the mediator or mediation process, and public policy.