ARS INSIGHTS PAKISTAN’S MISSING ARBITRATION HOME: LESSONS FROM THE ASTANA MODEL

Abstract

Pakistan has spent the better part of a decade drafting reforms to its arbitration law without building the institution that reform is meant to serve. Kazakhstan, by contrast, built a purpose made international arbitration centre in Astana within years of deciding it needed one, and now markets itself to global investors based on it. This insight asks why Pakistan, having absorbed a series of costly investor state disputes and produced repeated proposals for reform, still has no comparable institutional address for resolving disputes.