Parties to an international arbitration, their lawyers, the tribunal members and the arbitral institution have numerous data protection obligations, which may compete and overlap, creating a complex compliance framework, especially in disputes that typically involve a significant amount of personal data, such as large-scale construction, technology and digital information disputes.
In March 2020, the International Bar Association (IBA) and the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) issued a draft guidance – the Draft ICCA-IBA Roadmap to Data Protection in International Arbitration (the “Draft Roadmap”) – for consultation. While a finalised version of the Draft Roadmap will not be officially released until September 2021, the current version already provides fairly detailed and helpful guidance for Participants.
This GT Advisory sets out the key data protection obligations of Participants, with illustrative references to the Draft Roadmap and to the General Data Protection Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), which introduced many of the principles other modern data protection laws have adopted.