LIDW: Cherie Blair laments 'weaponisation' of conflict resolution

‘What does a legal victory mean if compliance is optional?’ That was a question posed by Cherie Blair CBE KC today in a plenary session at London International Disputes Week on the impact of geopolitical instability.

‘We are at a moment of legal reckoning, because what we are witnessing is a slow fraying of the rules-based order that has underpinned global stability and cooperation since the end of WW2,’ she told an audience of litigators at Westminster’s QE11 centre. ‘We are seeing institutions under pressure, treaty commitments being revisited or ignored, and the legitimacy of international adjudication itself being questioned.’

As founder and chair of Omnia Strategy, Blair has represented sovereign states and investors in international disputes. She cited a recent ICC arbitration in which a claimant backed by a third-party funder sued a poor African country for ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ relating to a project that was ‘barely off the drawing board’.

Omnia had the claim dismissed and secured an undertaking that the funder pay 100% of their client’s legal fees, as ordered by the tribunal. But the funder is now ‘desperately trying to wriggle out of its promise to pay’. In consequence an 'already resource-constrained government faces the prospect of further legal action just to enforce an undertaking which is in principle binding'.

She added: ‘Please bear in mind that for all the criticisms of states as "bad actors" because they don’t comply with awards in judgments, they are not the only ones who play fast and loose with their obligations.’ 

Blair called on arbitral tribunals to be ‘much more aware’ of such tactics and take action to ensure such legal victories do not turn out to be ‘pyrrhic’.

On tariffs and trade, the Omnia founder decried the ‘weaponisation of international dispute systems’ to undermine democratic policy choices. ‘In international arbitration,’ she said, ‘we are seeing an increasing number of investor-state claims alleging that social or environmental regulations amount to indirect expropriation. Trade is becoming a tool to undermine another country’s human rights framework – how they run their country.’

In trade negotiations, said Blair, Europe must ‘stand firm’ and ‘not allow international law to become a back-door way of undermining the very principles it is designed to protect’.

The keynote speech at today’s conference was delivered by Sarah Sackman KC MP, minister for courts and legal services. She stressed the importance of the UK dispute resolution sector’s ‘remarkable’ expansion to the government’s growth mission.

Sackman also declared that the UK lawtech sector is 'uniquely positioned' to support innovation. 'From AI-assisted case management, transcription, to listing tools and fully digital hearings and dispute resolution, the UK is embracing innovation,’ she said. 'In the Ministry of Justice we have an AI unit and an ambition to be the most innovative department in government. We are making processes faster, more accessible, and more cost-effective. And I want us to go further.’