Declining status of confidentiality in international commercial arbitration (considerations of transparency impose themselves) "Comparative Analytical Study" تراجع مكانة السرية في التحكيم التجاري الدولي اعتبارات الشفافية تفرض نفسها "دراسة تحليلية مقارنة"

Confidentiality has been widely praised as one of the main benefits of arbitration, and the source of this benefit is through the limits and duties imposed on the parties to abide by confidentiality, as well as on lawyers, the arbitral tribunal and the institution administering and supervising the arbitration process, and this duty extends to the existence of the arbitration and the documents used or referred to to it in arbitration until the award is issued by the arbitral tribunal.

Traditionally, an arbitration agreement is a contractual arrangement, therefore, it prevents third parties from intruding on the parties' confidential information and prevents it from affecting the independence of the arbitral tribunal.

Most of the national arbitration laws have included specific provisions related to the confidentiality of arbitration, which has led to disagreements about some issues related to confidentiality, and whether confidentiality is a presumed obligation? Or is it a conditional obligation under the provisions of an agreement or legal regulation?.

The matter is also ambiguous about the confidentiality of arbitration and its personal scope, and between the privacy of arbitration compared to the openness that characterizes the national judiciary, and whether there is a relationship between the privacy, confidentiality and nature of arbitration? Which one takes precedence over the other, privacy or secrecy? Which one includes privacy or confidentiality?.

Then, confidentiality, as the most important traditional advantages of arbitration, faced the phenomenon of the growing creep towards transparency, especially in investment arbitrations, whose parties tend to provide more information.