Professor Dr João Ribeiro-Bidaoui

Professor Dr João Ribeiro-Bidaoui

Between 2013 and 2018, Dr. João Ribeiro-Bidaoui was Head of the Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). With the mandate to promote the Model Law on Arbitration and the New York Convention, he provided technical assistance and capacity building on matters related to commercial and investment arbitration in China (including Macau  and Hong Kong SARs), Timor-Leste, Vietnam, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, India, Thailand and Indonesia. In that capacity, he was also responsible for the promotion in the region of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and devised and coordinated the United Nations technical assistance projects that culminated in the accession to the Convention of Fiji, Laos, Vietnam and North Korea. He was also co-leader of the Asian Development Bank’s project to reform arbitration laws in the South Pacific, in collaboration with Gary Born. Furthermore, Dr. Ribeiro-Bidaoui served as a consultant to the World Bank Group  for the reform of Mozambique’s commercial law.

From 2017 to 2020 he served on the Council of the Shenzhen International Court of Arbitration (SCIA). He is currently  a Member of the International Advisory Board of the Thailand Arbitration Centre (THAC), as well as President of the Ethics and Transparency Committee of the Lusophone Arbitration and Mediation Association (ALAM), headquartered in Macau SAR, China.

Over the past 4 years, and until recently,, he was First Secretary of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH), where he had primary responsibility over the Hague Conventions on Choice of Court (2005), Judgments (2019), Service (1965), Taking of Evidence (1970), Access to Justice (1980) and the Hague Principles on Choice of Law. He was also responsible for the Jurisdiction and Tourist Protection Projects, and was in charge of finalising the Judgments Convention, including steering the organisation of the 22^nd Diplomatic Session of the HCCH in 2019.

He has a Degree and a Master’s Degree in Law from the University of Coimbra (Portugal), a Master’s Degree in Law from the University of Macau (China) and a PhD in Sociology from the NOVA University of Lisbon (Portugal). He also holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), where he researched on the role private diplomats play in the negotiation of international treaties and on related questions of legitimacy.