MCB’s Third Year Anniversary; Continues to Make Waves!

With the period following the economic liberalization reforms initiated in 1977, the number of commercial cases filed has been on the rise. In 2013, the World Bank reported that 53% of the cases in the District Court of Colombo were on commercial money matters, and that the number of cases filed from 2011 to 2012 increased by 25%.

This increase in caseload without much change in judicial infrastructure which has overburdened the Courts, in turn resulting in significant delay in the disposal of cases.
World Bank Data also indicates that Sri Lanka takes 1318 days on average to enforce a contract, and this, among other things, has placed Sri Lanka 99th among 190 countries in the ease of doing business rankings. 
As a response to overburdened courts the private sector turned towards alternative forms of dispute resolution (ADR) to inter alia resolve their commercial disputes faster. 

Alternative Dispute Resolution primarily includes Arbitration, Mediation and Conciliation. The international legal framework for Arbitration and Mediation is set out by the New York Convention of 1958 and the Singapore Mediation Convention of 2019, respectively.

In this backdrop, the Moot Court Bench (MCB), an initiative launched in 2018 by a group of visionary ADR enthusiasts that has been creating waves in the ADR arena of Sri Lanka. The organization with young leadership is looking to improve and develop the command of ADR knowledge in Sri Lanka across the board. This year the MCB celebrates its third year of operation since 2019. Within the short time span, the MCB has launched and operates four programms: the International Commercial Arbitration, and International Trade Law Programms, with the support of the United States Department of Commerce, Commercial Law Development Programme (CLDP), and independent programs in Mediation, and National Advocacy Skills Building.

The International Commercial Arbitration Programme

The International Commercial Arbitration program was initiated in 2017. The programme began with the participation of three students from Sri Lanka Law College, Shamilka Karunanayake, Sulaiman Rameez, and Dilani Jayatilake, coached by Harprabdeep Singh. The team was coached for the 15th Vis East Moot – the world’s largest mooting competition focusing on International Commercial Arbitration 
and the International Sale of Goods. 

The International Commercial Arbitration Programme runs for three months where law students are offered world class education in the basics of International Commercial Arbitration, the International Sale of Goods and Written and Oral Advocacy. At the end of the three-month period, the students are assessed on their knowledge and skills, and subsequently short listed to compete at the Sri Lanka Vis National Rounds to be entitled to a full sponsorship by the CLDP to take part in the Vis Moot in Vienna and other Pre-Moots around the world. 

The International Trade Law Programme

In 2020, under the leadership of Harish Balakrishnan and Senith Abeyanayake, the MCB launched its International Trade Law Program supported by the CLDP.
An important component of the programme is the John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition organized by the European Law Students’ Association (ELSA) on International Trade Law and the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Dispute Settlement mechanisms, which attracts around 100 teams from across the world each year, as well as WTO experts from legal academia and the WTO Secretariat.

The WTO is the only global organization dealing with the rules of trade law between nations. At its heart are the WTO Agreements, negotiated, signed, and ratified by many of the world’s trading nations. These WTO Agreements cover nearly 98% of all global trade, and programme aims provide the young legal minds of Sri Lanka a robust understanding of these rules that govern Sri Lanka’s exports, imports, and trading relations with other nations.

The International Commercial Mediation Program

The Mediation Programme is the latest addition to the lineup of Programms the MCB offers. Mediation is one of the fastest-growing dispute resolution mechanisms in the world. Despite its many benefits, compared to other methods of dispute resolution, Mediation is still a rather underdeveloped area of practice in Sri Lanka. Thus, the MCB instituted a Mediation Wing with the aim of providing theoretical and practical knowledge on International Commercial Mediation not only to law students but also to business management students in order to create the future pool of talented Mediators and Advocates. The International Commercial Mediation (ICM) Programme consists of two main phases: The Mediation Training Programme and The Sri Lanka Mediation National Rounds. The first edition in 2021 was conducted on virtual platform given the novel constraints the world is under due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This in turn made education on Mediation accessible to students from all over Sri Lanka.

The National Advocacy Building Programme

The MCB extended its outreach by launching the National Advocacy Building Programme in October 2021, as it recognized the lacuna in the opportunities presented to law students in the mooting arena in the two national languages – Sinhala and Tamil. This programme, hosted in collaboration with the University of Jaffna, under the purview of the co-conveners, Ajra Azhar and Mathuri Kathiravelu, trained over 50 students on the topics of contract law, arbitration, written advocacy including research and referencing, and oral advocacy in both languages.
The competition was the first of its kind and a significant step towards the promotion and elevation of legal advocacy across the Island, in the context of Commercial Arbitration - an area of dispute resolution seldom discussed at universities, particularly in the Sinhala and Tamil languages.