The Saudi Arabian arbitration law in the international business community: A Saudi perspective.

Arbitration is now generally accepted as a principle method of solving disputes in commercial transactions. It is no longer a product to be advertised in seminars or symposiums related to international trade, rather it is a must in international business transactions. Because we have reached a point where most countries have adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law on arbitration and become party to the 1958 New York Convention on the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards, we believe that some studies from the Islamic perspective are necessary in order to find a route to the theory of the delocalisation of arbitration. Moreover, at the time when practitioners are calling for the internationalisation of arbitration, I believe that my duty as a former Secretary of the Arbitration Board at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Riyadh is to discuss, evaluate, and present the situation as it stands today. It is also, our responsibility to propose a route to its harmonisation within the international standards of arbitration. The idea of providing a historical background to arbitration is not solely for the purpose of historical research. However, as we will see in later chapters when we describe the Saudi legal system, Shari'a law and Islamic jurisprudence are the main laws of the land, and they are applicable whenever there is a statutory vacuum. Therefore, an Islamic solution has to be found when addressing any problems related to arbitration in this research. Also, the purpose of this research is to set down the reasons that have made people believe that Saudi Arabia, of all the Arab Middle Eastern countries, is indeed the one in most need of a well-developed arbitration system, since some of the major banking and commercial activities are not permitted to come before the Shari'a courts. Moreover, in the year 2000 Saudi Arabia implemented the Foreign Investment Act, which liberalizes foreign investment in the Kingdom. The Saudi Arabian Government Investment Authority, which has responsibility for licensing all new foreign investment in Saudi Arabia, was created under the Act. This of course comes as a result of the government's desire to diversify the sources of national income. All these reasons should have an affect on developing commercial law in general and arbitration in particular