Better Business Desk at Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DCCI) organizes "Conflict Management through Mediation" seminar

The seminar highlighted the concepts of mediation and its benefits as it helped enhance the participants' awareness about the sorts of professional disputes and disagreements that might occur among the commercial parties and how to resolve these disputes through utilizing the latest practical and technical means of mediation.

The seminar was inaugurated by Hisham Al Shirawi, Member of the DCCI Board of Directors, and attended by a number of the Heads of Dubai government Departments, Loong Seng Onn, Executive Director of SMC, along with Carol Liew, SMC Manager, as well as a number of lawyers, legal consultants and advocates from the UAE, and members of the DCCI and its related Business Groups and Councils, as well as representatives of embassies and consulates and trading centers in the UAE.

Al Shirawi highlighted the importance of the seminar which is organized by DCCI as one of its value-added services provided to its members and the business community in Dubai, in the line of its strategy that aims at enhancing its members' mutual ties and resolve their disputes in order to improve their businesses and create an appropriated business environment that encourages them to compete.

"As businesses are continuously developing, along with its competitive potentials, disagreements and disputes could easily occur among the commercial and contracting parties which in turn lead to serious damages in the relations of the disputants, and today's seminar highlights the importance of mediation as an effective and practical means that should be relied on by the commercial parties to resolve their disputes peacefully without referring to courts of law," said Al Shirawi.

Jehad Kazim, Manager of the DCCI Better Business Desk, stressed the Dubai Chamber's interest in organizing such seminars to encourage its members, who are involved in various business contracts, to depend on mediation in resolving their disputes friendly to ensure the continuity of their mutual businesses and relationships where referring to court is the last resort.

"Conflicts and disputes are inevitable issues that could occur among the commercial parties any time, and therefore, mediation became the most advisable, effective and efficient means to be adopted in terms that it ensures control over the dispute outcome," said Kazim adding that managing conflicts and disputes through mediation helps the disputants keep their mutual relations once the disagreement is over, on the contrary to the courts of law whose verdicts cause permanent cut of ties.

She pointed out that the seminar would help enhance the participants' awareness on the importance of depending on mediation as one of the alternative means to settle disputes and keep a healthy business environment which is one of the key factors behind the success of any establishment or company.

Various papers and topics were discussed in the seminar such as an introduction to mediation and a comparison between mediation and other dispute resolution mechanisms, seven elements of interest based on conflict resolution, stages of mediation, necessary skills of a mediator, and others.