The Look at Arbitration: an Effective Way of Business Activity Conference held on March 13 in Yerevan primarily aimed to present to the business environment information on Armenian arbitrage as an alternative dispute resolution institute.

The conference was organized by the Council of Europe and the Association of Arbitrators of the Republic of Armenia within the Support to the Judicial Reform in Armenia Council of Europe Program.

The discussions covered the activities of the Armenian local and international arbitration bodies, current challenges and factors impeding the development of arbitration and the ways to overcome such factors. The Conference participants and organizers also referred to the reasons for the lack of confidence in the institute of arbitration.

According to the assessment by Aram Orbelyan, Chairperson of the Association of Arbitrators of Armenia, "There is a lack of awareness about the Armenian Arbitration Courts and therefore, there is also no sufficient trust in that institute; we are skeptical about any phenomena we know little or nothing about". Whereas, according to Aram Orbelyan, thanks to arbitration courts, the courts may be significantly unloaded. "This means releasing courts of professional and technical cases of mixed nature; in this case, the court will focus on cases that are not subject to arbitration."

By presenting to the Conference participants the functions, targets and principles of the institute operating under his chairmanship, Aram Orbelyan also referred to the online dispute resolution mechanisms in Armenia, as well as the specifics and development perspectives thereof.

He also presented the work done by Concern Dialog in creating an online dispute resolution platform of ‘.am’ and ‘.հայ’ domain names as well as the possibilities of applying similar mechanisms in other areas as well for a maximum protection of consumer rights.

The conference was attended by foreign diplomats and representatives of international organizations, arbitrations and legal firms in Armenia as well as business representatives.