Enforcement of a foreign award in Oman

Abstract

THERE is a widely held belief that it is not possible to enforce a foreign arbitration award in the Sultanate of Oman. Oman has not ratified the 1958 New York Convention; and it has been assumed that the successful party must submit the foreign award to the appropriate judicial authority in Oman for a retrial of the dispute in accordance with local procedure before the award could be enforced in Oman. Thus, Dr Samir Saleh in his book Commercial Arbitration in the Arab Middle East states as follows: ‘Any award made outside Oman and involving any foreign element must be retried before the Committee for the Settlement of Commercial Disputes and, in practice, embodied in a CSCD Decision in order to be enforced in Oman.’1 This statement is no longer correct. It is now clear that arbitration clauses specifying arbitration outside Oman (for example, the standard ICC arbitration clause)...