Jordan raises arbitration ambitions with launch of independent JAC

The draft law includes establishing JAC by statute with legal personality, financial and administrative independence, and full capacity to own property, contract and litigate. The draft law also modernises the procedural framework of the original statute, introducing mandatory emergency arbitrators, expedited procedures, electronic proceedings, multi-party case management, and third-party funding disclosure requirements.

The development is relevant to international businesses and investors contracting with Jordanian counterparties or considering Jordan as a seat of arbitrators. The establishment of the JAC is also important for contractors and developers involved in government projects, public-private partnerships (PPPs), and development-finance programmes in Jordan. In-house counsel and external advisors drafting dispute resolution clauses for transactions involving Jordanian parties or assets should also take note as well as regional and international arbitration practitioners advising on seat selection in the Middle East.

The JAC is a private non-profit entity whose resources must be used exclusively in furtherance of its objectives, which include entrenching Jordan's position as a hub for arbitration, administering local, regional, and international proceedings, and promoting an arbitration culture across the region.

The centre is governed by a board of trustees comprising a chairman and eight members with legal, commercial, and arbitration expertise, appointed by the Council of Ministers for a four-year term, renewable once. The board is expressly prohibited from interfering in the content of arbitrators' decisions.

The centre's procedural rules must address mandatory requirements: emergency arbitrators for interim measures before the tribunal is constituted; expedited procedures for compressed timeframes; multi-party and multi-contract dispute management, including consolidation and joinder; electronic proceedings; and mandatory disclosure of third-party funding, including the identity of the funder.

Practical benefits for Jordan

The JAC’s establishment delivers several immediate benefits.

The centre will maintain a publicly accessible register of arbitrators and experts updated against objective criteria, which may replace ad hoc self-selection with an institutional quality benchmark for the first time.

Electronic means, audio-visual tools, and electronic signatures are now expressly permitted for all procedures. Tribunals must issue their final award within three months in labour disputes and six months in all others from the date of constitution, with permissible extensions of a further three and six months respectively.

The tax exemption regime is particularly powerful. The JAC, its assets, and its activity-related expenditure are exempt from all taxes and government fees. Cases administered by the centre are exempt from all taxes and fees where one party is foreign, or the dispute is international in character. Documents relating to disputes concerning transactions or assets outside Jordan are exempt from import stamp duty requirements.

Government contracts

The JAC’s establishment is particularly significant for public sector and infrastructure contracting. Jordan hosts a growing portfolio of government projects, PPPs and development finance programmes involving international counterparties who routinely require a credible institutional dispute resolution framework as a condition of engagement. The JAC’s mandate – providing a legal environment that supports commercial and business development through effective dispute resolution – is squarely aligned with those requirements.

The availability of emergency arbitrators and expedited procedures will be of immediate operational value in government contracting, where disputes over payment, or variations can have direct consequences for public service delivery.

Competition in the Middle East

Jordan enters the institutional arbitration market at a time of intense regional competition, with established institutions in Dubai, Riyadh, Doha, Muscat and Cairo. However, the JAC’s legislative foundation gives it several advantages.

The tax exemption with non-derogation force provides a degree of legislative certainty that few regional competitors can match. The co-administration and partnership powers allow the JAC to leverage the reputational capital of globally recognised institutions from the outset, without waiting years to build its own caseload.

In Dubai, board members serve non-renewable terms, and the rules expressly require independence from the board. In Saudi Arabia, board members are prohibited from holding concurrent governmental positions, and the case-management court is constituted by a separate instrument. In Egypt, an independent tripartite committee handles challenges and removals entirely at arm’s length from the board. Saudi Arabia and Dubai both use governmental appointment and both are internationally credible but in each case that appointment is accompanied by non-renewable terms, express independence obligations, and a separately constituted case-management body.

The current Jordanian framework adopts central appointment without any of those compensating safeguards. In international arbitration, perceived independence is as important as actual independence, and a foreign legal adviser will flag this gap as an institutional risk when recommending an arbitration clause. A targeted amendment introducing non-renewable terms, an express independence obligation, and a separately constituted case-management body would address this concern at minimal legislative cost, before the centre opens its doors.

Alignment with international standards

The mandatory features of the centre's procedural rules - emergency arbitrators, expedited procedures, multi-party case management, electronic proceedings, and third-party funding disclosure - are now standard across the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) and the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA). Their mandatory inclusion places Jordan's institutional framework at the baseline of current international expectations from day one.

Jordan's original Arbitration Law No. 31 of 2001 was modelled on the UNCITRAL Model Law. The 2026 amendments build on that foundation, giving international practitioners a familiar framework to navigate from the outset.

Ad hoc arbitration and party representation

Jordan has a pioneering place in the history of Arab arbitration, with a dedicated statute dating from 1931 and a modern standalone law enacted in 1953. The 2026 amendments of the Arbitration Law add the institutional infrastructure to match that legislative tradition.

On party representation, Article 16 of the draft permits non-Jordanian lawyers - in conjunction with Jordanian counsel - to represent parties in centre-administered proceedings where one party is foreign, a Jordanian entity with at least 50% non-Jordanian ownership, or the dispute is subject to foreign law. This is a meaningful reform, but one that requires an authoritative clarification.

The New York Convention

The core base of Jordan's international arbitration credibility is its membership of the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. Jordan signed the Convention on 10 June 1958, ratified it in November 1979, and it entered into force for Jordan in February 1980 - making it one of the longest-standing Convention members in the Arab world.

Every award issued in a JAC-administered arbitration will be enforceable in 172 contracting states as a matter of treaty obligation, without re-litigation on the merits. This gives the JAC an enforcement infrastructure from its first day of operation that other regional institutions took years to build.

Co-written by Talal AlShammari of Pinsent Masons.