The SICC, Mediation and the Singapore Convention: summary
The Singapore International Commercial Court, launched in January 2015 as a division of the High Court, combines Singapore judges with 26 International Judges from common law and civil law jurisdictions and allows registered foreign lawyers to appear in offshore cases and on questions of foreign law. In its first decade it grew from two cases to 28 a year and developed three lines of work: trial of complex cross-border disputes, supervision of Singapore-seated arbitrations and cross-border restructuring. The Singapore International Mediation Centre, founded in November 2014, links mediation to arbitration and to SICC litigation through the Arb-Med-Arb and Lit-Med-Lit protocols, so that settlements can be recorded as consent awards or court orders. The Singapore Convention on Mediation, adopted in 2018 and in force since September 2020, makes international mediated settlements directly enforceable in its 25 parties, although the largest trading economies have yet to ratify it. SICC judgments travel through the Hague Choice of Court Convention, the Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act and a growing network of memoranda of guidance with courts from Dubai to Seoul, which together give Singapore a reach that Geneva is only now beginning to build for its own courts.
For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.