The Winds of Change: ICSID in the Geopolitical Arena

August Reinisch is professor of international and European law at the University of Vienna and a Member of the International Law Commission as well as of the Institut de droit international. He is president of the Austrian branch of the International Law Association (ILA) and served as chair of the ILA Committee on Rule of Law and International Investment Law (2016-2024). 

He has frequently served as arbitrator in investment cases mostly under ICSID and UNCITRAL Rules. He has published widely in international law with a focus on international investment law and on the law of international organizations and he is currently serving as the ILC’s Special Rapporteur on the topic “The settlement of disputes to which international organizations are parties”.

Patricia Nacimiento, Dr. iur., leads the German dispute resolution team and the EMEA international arbitration team of Herbert Smith Freehills. She specializes in Public International Law and investment disputes, with over 25 years of experience. She has extensive experience both as counsel under the rules of numerous arbitration institutions – including ICC, ICSID, SCC, CIETAC, DIS, LCIA, ICDR, Swiss Chamber of Commerce, Indian Council of Arbitration, and the Danish Institution of Arbitration as well as ad hoc proceedings. Patricia has been appointed by the German government to the ICSID list of arbitrators since 2007. She has also vast experience in arbitration related court proceedings and leads multi-national teams in enforcing or defending against enforcement of international awards. 

Patricia is a native German speaker and is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Italian. She teaches investment disputes at the Universities of Berlin, Heidelberg and Saarland, and excels as an editor of a leading commentary on Arbitration in Germany and on the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. For years, Patricia has been listed as a leading disputes expert in renowned rankings and directories globally.

Meg Kinnear is a founding member of LKDR LLC, and acts as an arbitrator, mediator and conciliator in international disputes. She was formerly the Secretary-General of ICSID (2009-2024) and a Vice-President of the World Bank. Prior to that, Meg was the Director-General of Canada's Trade Law Bureau (1999-2009) and involved in particular in early NAFTA Chapter 11 cases. She has published extensively on investor-State dispute settlement and investment law.

Elisa Méndez Bräutigam is a Legal Counsel at ICSID. Prior to joining ICSID, Ms. Méndez Bräutigam worked as an attorney in the international public law and international arbitration department of the law firm Foley Hoag in Washington D.C. and in the international arbitration department of the law firm Uría Menéndez in Madrid. Ms. Méndez Bräutigam holds degrees from Georgetown University (LL.M.), Universidad Complutense of Madrid and Universidad of La Rioja. She is admitted to practice law in Spain.

Catherine Rogers is a professor of law at Bocconi University in Milan Italy. She teaches and write on topics relating to international arbitration generally, and to ethics and professional regulation in global legal practice more specifically. Among other appointments, Catherine is a Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the U.S. Law of International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration, serves on the international advisory boards of several arbitral institutions, and was a co-chair of the ICCA-Queen Mary Task Force on Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration together with William W. Park and Stavros Brekoulakis. She is currently working on the second edition of her book, Ethics in International Arbitration.

Christoph Schreuer is a former Professor of International Law at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Salzburg and the University of Vienna. He is Of Counsel with Zeiler Rechtsanwälte in Vienna and works as legal expert and arbitrator in investment cases.

General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, Human Rights Officer, Legal, Compliance, Data Protection, Insurances - Wintershall Dea GmbH, Kassel, Germany

Professor Wolkewitz specializes in German and international energy, environmental, investment protection, and corporate law. He has led complex international transactions in the oil and gas sectors across North Africa, South America, Southeastern Europe, and Russia, often as chief negotiator. He advises on approval processes for oil and gas infrastructure and has managed arbitration proceedings under ICSID, ICC, SCC, UNCITRAL, and national arbitration rules. Additionally, he served on the Supervisory Board of VNG Verbundnetz Gas AG (2012-2014) and is a member of the IBA and the legal committee of the German Industry Association (BDI).
 

Andrea K. Bjorklund is a Full Professor and the L. Yves Fortier Chair in International Arbitration and International Commercial Law at McGill University Faculty of Law.  She acts as arbitrator and expert in both investment and commercial arbitrations.  She has been appointed to the ICSID roster of arbitrators by the Government of Canada, and is on the panel of arbitrators of several leading institutions, including the Beijing Arbitration Commission/Beijing International Arbitration Center and the Shenzen Court of International Arbitration.  Before entering the academy she was an attorney-adviser on the NAFTA arbitration team in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State.  She is the General Editor of Arbitration International and is the Editor for Investment for the Journal of International Dispute Settlement. She publishes widely on international economic law matters and on dispute settlement.  

Tim Eicke is Judge of the European Court of Human Rights elected in respect of the United Kingdom. A dual-British/German national, he studied law at the Universities of Passau and Dundee. Before taking up his current appointment, he was a barrister at Essex Court Chambers. He was a member of the Attorney General’s Panel of Counsel from 1999 until he was appointed a Queen's Counsel (now King’s Counsel) in 2011. While in practice, he regularly argued cases in the UK Supreme Court, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights and acted both for claimants and governments across a whole range of issues including Public International Law, international human rights law, the law of the European Union as well as UK public and constitutional law. In 2017, he received an Honorary doctorate from the University of Dundee. Between October 2020 and October 2024, he was Vice-President of Section IV of the Court.

Benedicte Stenvaag is heading the Commercial Law & Litigation team in the Legal & Compliance department at Uniper SE. After studies in Freiburg, Oslo, Göttingen and legal clerkship in Essen, she started her career in the legal department of E.ON Ruhrgas AG in 2005. From 2007 through 2015, she took over a commercial role with responsibility for the long-term gas sales agreements with Norwegian suppliers before she re-joined the legal department, first of E.ON SE and then Uniper SE. 

Dr. Crina Baltag is an Associate Professor in International Arbitration Law at Stockholm University and a qualified attorney with over 20 years of experience in international dispute resolution. She is the academic director of the LL.M. in International Commercial Arbitration Law at Stockholm University and a board member of the SCC Arbitration Institute. Crina chairs the Institute for Transnational Arbitration Academic Council and directs the Oxford Diploma Course on International Commercial Arbitration.

Recognized as a leading academic in international dispute resolution, Crina frequently speaks at global conferences and serves as a visiting professor at various universities. She has contributed to international dispute resolution reform, including work with the G20’s T20 group and the International Bar Association. Crina has published extensively on arbitration topics and is the managing editor of the Kluwer Arbitration Blog. She has served as an arbitrator and expert in numerous international arbitrations under various institutional rules.

Dr Jaroslav Kudrna is the Head of the International Arbitration and Investment Protection Independent Unit at the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic. He defends the Republic in investment arbitrations, negotiates BITs on its behalf and represents it in international forums, including UNCITRAL (WG III). Prior to joining the Ministry, Dr. Kudrna worked as an associate in the international arbitration group of White & Case in New York where he focused on investment and commercial arbitration. He previously trained in leading law firms in Paris and Prague. Dr. Kudrna obtained a PhD in public international law at Charles University in Prague, an LLM in International Business Regulation, Litigation and Arbitration at New York University and Masters of Laws at the University of Strasbourg and Sciences Po Paris. Dr. Kudrna has passed the New York Bar and Paris Bar exams.  

Ndanga is an independent arbitrator with experience in international arbitration, public international law, private international law, and investment law. She has considerable expertise in matters related to Africa and is proficient in issues related to compensation, damages, costs, and interest. Ndanga regularly teaches, speaks, and writes on topics related to hear areas of specialisation. 
 
Ndanga holds several leadership positions. These include honorary senior fellow of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL), member of the Governing Board of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration  (ICCA), and council member of the ICC Institute of World Business Law. She is a former vice president of the ICC International Court of Arbitration (2018-2024) and member of the ILA Committee on Rule of Law and International Investment Law. Ndanga was called to the Bar of England and Wales by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in 2010. 

Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi is the Executive Director of the Register of Damage Caused by the Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, appointed on 1 July 2023 after being designated for this position by the COP at its first meeting.
Markiyan has almost 20 years of experience of legal practice in the fields of international law and dispute resolution, during which he has earned recognition as one of the top Ukrainian lawyers in this field.

As the Executive Director, Markiyan has day-to-day responsibility for overseeing and administrating the work of the Secretariat of the Register, and together with the Secretariat – supporting the work of the Board and the COP.
The Executive Director’s key functions include organising the submission of claims, their processing and forwarding to the Board for decision making, along with recommendations, as well as liaising with national and international bodies, including the Government of Ukraine, on various matters related to the work of the Register.

Johanna (Joke) Klein Kranenberg is the Head of the International Dispute Settlement Unit at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, since March 2022. She is in charge of coordinating Chile’s defense in investor-State arbitrations and related controversies. Between 2016 and 2022, she was the coordinator of the Chilean defense in the Dispute over the Status and Use of the Waters of the Silala (Chile v. Bolivia) before the International Court of Justice. Previously, she worked as counsel at Santiago law firm Bofill Mir & Alvarez Jana in investor-State arbitration as well as in commercial arbitration proceedings before the ICC, CAM Santiago and ad hoc tribunals. She is a Dutch trained lawyer with degrees from the University of Utrecht, the University of Tilburg and Yale Law School.

Marc Bungenberg is the Director of the Europa-Institut, holds a Jean Monnet Chair for “EU Constitutional Framework for International Dispute Settlement and Rule of Law” and is Professor of Public Law, European Law and Public International Law at Saarland University in Germany, permanent visiting professor at the University of Lausanne/Switzerland, honorary professor at Tashkent State University of Law and member of the scientific advisory board to the International Investment Law Centre in Cologne. 

Marc received his doctorate in law from the University of Hannover and wrote his habilitation treatise at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. He holds an LL.M. from Lausanne University. He has published extensively on especially international dispute settlement. His main fields of research are European (Common Commercial Policy, public procurement and state aid law) and international economic law, particularly international investment, economic sanstions, investment screening and WTO law. 

Professor of Public International Law at the University of Vienna; member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration; member of the Panel of Arbitrators under the Agreement on the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union; member of the Panel of Conciliators maintained by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes; alternate member of the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration within the OSCE; member of the Arbitration panel for the Protocol on Cultural Cooperation to the Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and its Member States and the Republic of Korea; legal expert in various investment arbitrations and human rights cases.

Judith Knieper is a legal officer at the Secretariat of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in Vienna. She is the Secretary of Working Group II on Dispute Settlement, also services Working Group III on Investor-State Dispute Settlement Reform and is responsible for Mediation. 

Until her appointment to the Secretariat, she had been working in South East Europe from 1998 -2013 for numerous donors/organizations, e.g. OSCE, CoE, Worldbank and GIZ, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, the German international cooperation. 

She obtained both Legal State Exams in Frankfurt, Germany as well as her PhD and is also qualified and certified as a Mediator. 

Martin Wolfbauer, International Legal Department of STRABAG.  Martin is an Austrian and New York qualified lawyer.  After several years in major international and domestic law firms, he joined the international construction group STRABAG, based in Vienna, in 2009.  In STRABAG’s legal services unit, CML, he is primarily in charge of international guarantees and dispute resolution in international construction projects around the globe.  In this capacity, Martin advises and represents STRABAG in international dispute resolution proceedings including inter alia investment arbitration and mediation involving infrastructure projects.  Martin frequently holds lectures on international law and guarantees.

Jae Sung Lee is a senior legal officer at the International Trade Law Division of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, which functions as the substantive secretariat for UNCITRAL. He currently functions as the secretary of Working Group III on Investor-State Dispute Settlement Reform and has served as secretary of working groups on dispute settlement, secured transactions and electronic commerce. Before joining the United Nations in 2007, Jae Sung served in the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Jae Sung is a graduate of Seoul National University College of Law, holds LL.M. degrees from Seoul National University Graduate School of International Studies and NYU School of Law as well as a Ph.D. in Law from Seoul National University.