Veep lauds proposed establishment of African Arbitration Centre

Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur has said government will consider the suggestion to establish an African Arbitration Centre in Accra.

According to him, the government of Ghana will liaise with the private sector to arrive at a concrete position on the issue.

The Vice President said this when the wife of a former British Prime Minister, Cherie Blair, called on him at the Flagstaff House in Accra.

Mrs Blair said the government of Ghana should consider initiating the establishment of an African Arbitration Centre in Ghana, and that the Centre should be manned by Africans to deal with the issue of arbitration especially between individual business and mining concerns, and governments on the continent.

Such issues had hitherto been dealt with by the International Arbitration Court.

Mrs Blair, who led a three-member-delegation, expressed grave concern about the amounts of monies which African government's pay to aggrieved parties who win their cases at the Court.

These huge sums of monies, she said, was a drain on the resources of African governments, and a consequent inability to undertake requisite infrastructural development to meet the material conditions of the masses of the people, adding that the establishment of the proposed centre would go a long way to build the capacity of local lawyers in international arbitration.

Mrs Blair noted that with its enviable pedigree as the bastion of democracy in Africa, south of the Sahara, Ghana’s quest to establish a regional centre for arbitration would receive support among the comity of nations.

The former British First Lady also touted the country's judiciary system, which she claimed, was able to deal expeditiously with cases, especially the 2012 election petition.

The Attorney General and the Minister of Justice, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, described the idea as a good one, stressing that the presence of such a centre in the country will benefit the continent.