Dr Shouyu Chong plays important role in the Singapore Convention’s uptake in UK
Dr Chong has submitted a report to the Ministry of Justice, in their most recent Public Consultation on the implementation of the Singapore Convention on Mediation in the UK.
The Singapore Convention on Mediation is a uniform and efficient framework for international settlement agreements resulting from mediation. The Singapore Convention will facilitate international trade and commerce by enabling disputing parties to easily enforce and invoke settlement agreements across borders.
The UK signed the Singapore Convention on Mediation in May 2023, and is currently in the midst of implementing its provisions.
A Public Consultation in October 2025 was a targeted consultation which engaged leading experts in private international law and mediation on their views on how the Singapore Convention might be implemented and operated in the UK.
Dr Chong’s report has the following recommendations:
- The Singapore Convention on Mediation should be implemented in the UK through the adaptation of currently available enforcement mechanisms in law and civil procedure for the enforcement of settlement agreements and compromises (eg consent orders and Tomlin orders). Drafters of the implementing legislation should be aware that there are significant differences between mediation, arbitration and cross-border litigation, to avoid shoe-horning enforcement practices that currently work for arbitral awards and foreign judgments into mediation practice.
- Drafters may look to the Singapore Convention on Mediation Act 2020 from Singapore as a model to design implementing legislation. The Singapore law which implements the Convention has been robustly designed and may be well-suited for UK law, considering the similarities in legal traditions of both jurisdictions.
- The enforcing courts should not be provided with general powers to direct parties to make submissions over whether a mediated settlement agreement should not be enforceable under the Singapore Convention, in ex parte applications for enforcement. Article 5(1) of the Convention explicitly provides an exhaustive list of defences, which may only be invoked by a party to the mediated settlement agreement (and not the courts). Article 5(2) of the Convention provides that the courts may only review mediated settlement agreements on their own initiative if there is a violation of public policy, or if the subject matter of the settlement agreement is incapable of resolution at mediation.
- Legislation implementing the Singapore Convention should be drafted carefully, to avoid leading the parties to believe that they could and should pursue more litigation over the enforcement procedure of their mediated settlement agreements.
These recommendations were, in the main, based on Dr Chong’s 2022 co-edited article.
Dr Chong says:
From persuading the government to sign the Singapore Convention on Mediation in 2023 to lending assistance to the Ministry of Justice in its drafting and implementation of the Convention today, I am pleased that my research on the Singapore Convention and international commercial dispute resolution may be put to good and impactful application. I am excited to play a pivotal part in the change that we are witnessing in the international dispute resolution scene.
Additional resources
Dr Chong co-authored the leading monograph on the Singapore Convention on Mediation. His research on the Singapore Convention has also been widely cited, such as in Foskett on Compromise (10th Ed), and the Lady Chief Justice's speech earlier in January 2025 at the BIICL's annual lecture.
Dr Chong’s involvement with this Convention is indicative of how School of Law colleagues are engaged in powerful research which has a real-world impact on policy at both a national and international level.
Dr Chong is a member of the Centre for Business Law and Practice and can be found on LinkedIn here.
