The International Court of Arbitration (ICC Court) of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has published its full dispute resolution statistical report for 2019.

The ICC Court registered a record 869 new cases in 2019. Of that total, 851 were administered under the ICC Rules of Arbitration and involved parties originating from 147 countries and independent territories.

Another ICC record included a significant increase in the number of state and state-owned entities in ICC Arbitration over the past five years, marking a historical record, states and state-owned entities were parties in 20% of ICC’s new cases.

Increases were also seen in the number of Indian parties, which tripled and reached 147. Having ranked 15th in 2018 with just 47 parties, India now comes in second on the overall number of parties worldwide. Moreover, Chinese parties also rose significantly, going from 59 to 105. The surge moves China, which includes Hong Kong and Macao, from the 11th position to the fifth.

In terms of arbitrator representation, 61.7% originated from Europe, 21.1% from South America, 10% from North America (United States and Canada), 12.6% from Asia and Australia and 3.6% from Africa.

Furthering the drive for gender diversity for the tenth year in a row, the ICC Court reported another increase in the total number of women serving as arbitrators. The figure stands at 21% for 2019, an increase from 18.4% in 2018.

Throughout 2019, the ICC Court also administered a total number of 23 Emergency Arbitrator applications. The cases involved parties of 29 nationalities and six multi-party cases. ICC first introduced the service as a response to arbitration user needs in 2012 and since has received a total number of 117 emergency arbitrator cases.

In December 2019, the ICC Court also celebrated the registration of its 25,000th case. The milestone case was a corporate dispute between parties from the Middle East and India and is currently being administered through the Secretariat’s case management office in Singapore.

In addition to ICC’s leading arbitration services, the institution also provides a range of alternative services that can be used separately, successively or even concurrently with arbitration – all of which are managed by the ICC International Centre for ADR.