Created through a collaborative
international process, the protocol was designed to set professional standards and guidelines for the identification, collection, preservation, verification and analysis of digital open source Information. The ultimate aim was to improve the effective use of
such information in international criminal, human rights, and humanitarian investigations, and ultimately, courts.

The session will explore the challenges faced by farmers, food businesses, consumers, and environmental institutions and entities when dealing with the global tensions that concern the production and supply of food commodities and products, in relation with farming costs and financing. The panellists will discuss about the strategic and legal solutions to be adopted in order to prevent present and future stress conditions from happening throughout the healthy and less-healthy areas of the world.

By their nature, international arbitrations involve lawyers, clients and others from multiple jurisdictions where ethical and the way in which lawyers practice can vary widely. This panel considers the impact of these differences from the perspective of both counsel and arbitrators in seeking to acknowledge how these differences can be highlighted to more efficiently resolve disputes.

Things couldn’t get worse, when you get a call from a journalist asking questions. And then, the overseas office is raided by law enforcement. The scenario will unfold through an interactive multi-media session and you, the audience, will be the board – it’s up to you to decide what to do at each stage. You will be guided by a panel of expert investigations lawyers who can provide advice and insight from their experience across jurisdictions, but the ultimate decision-making will rest with you!

HumanRightsConfession-driven criminal justice systems incur a higher risk of torture and coercion during investigations and other information gathering processes.

In advance of the session (over the course of September/October 2022), The Legal 500, on behalf of the Law Firm Management Committee, will canvass GCs and law firms to gather questions that they want to ask the panel/s about the simple ways that you can lose clients. As a result, the questions we will be asking will be editorially curated by Paul and myself, to give the sessions the right structure, but will be tailored specifically to the audience. What then follows is a “conference within a conference” the shorter sessions hold people’s attention, and a greater pool of speaker leads to diversity of thought and ideas.

HumanRightsThe Covid-19 pandemic has illustrated ethical challenges in relation to medicines (including vaccines and diagnostic testing) and other therapeutic goods being made available to the world’s population (including the elderly, children and indigenous populations) and the dichotomy between pharmaceutical companies making money in order to fund future innovation versus the poor being able to access live saving therapeutic goods.

Shortages of medicines and medical devices are caused not only by manufacturing challenges, but also by distribution unavailability, due to issues at distribution chain level. This session will examine the phenomena within the distribution chain that can lead to shortages of medicine and medical devices, such as parallel trade. The session will also explore different approaches to deal with such shortages by several jurisdictions, including the imposition of regulated prices, blacklist, export controls/restrictions, government mandated distribution and challenging product registration rules.

Efforts to innovate and re-imagine the delivery of legal services have taken a new turn, one that includes permitting alternative business structures and professionals other than lawyers delivering legal services direct to consumers.

Several important regulations will change the level playing field as the Data Act, the Data Governance Act, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Similarly, the US agencies, the AAA and other agencies around the world are paving the way to regulating the digital economy. In parallel, antitrust and competition law are still very much relevant and topical. What will be the impact in the telecommunications industry, the internet, advertising and e-commerce ecosystems? The session will analyse what changing are occurring in the different regions around the world and how the digital map will look in the forthcoming years.

The roundtables discussions cover topics of imminent importance often influenced by the submitted National Reports, by measures of legislation, the OECD or other international bodies, and aim at involving the audience in a particularly personal manner. Our session will look at the following key topics:

• Legislative and court developments in relation to GAARs and abusive transactions
• Structuring investments in Fintechs and start-ups: the common structures for entry of the investments and exit via PPMs or IPOs
• ESG “T” – the role of taxes in sustainable businesses. Approach of MNEs towards sustainable tax structures, pressures from society and governmental authorities, tax policy measures; use of taxes to balance gender diversity issues (pink taxes)
• Tax liligation: increasing trend to tax litigation and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, such as tax arbitration and mediation
• Domestic characterisation and reporting/disclosure for crypto and digital assets

The European Union and a growing list of countries are working on carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAM) aimed at taxing emissions imbedded in imported products.

The world has been turned upside down by Covid and other new risks. The insurance community is always directly affected by new and unexpected risks. This was demonstrated by the issues resulting from Covid and other risks that have come to the fore in the past year. This session will look at the issues in direct and reinsurance related to these emerging and emerged risks.

This moderated panel will provide a range of perspectives on some of the key issues currently affecting mining in Africa, including environmental, social and other land justice issues in the mining sector and mine affected communities; the critical need to retain and maintain a social license to operate in Africa; the fact that Africa contains some of the key commodities for meeting projected worldwide demand for critical minerals; and the practical challenges of how to create effective government and community engagement and partnerships while avoiding the pitfalls of recourse to international arbitration.

The interactive panel discussion will cover the growing cross-jurisdictional requirements (regulatory, stock exchange driven and market-based) to include greater representation of women on boards of directors, the drivers of these requirements and how boards can meet (and are meeting) these requirements. This will include a discussion of process integration and strategies to grow the number of women on boards, and the responsibilities of decision makers and influencers as they relate to this necessary evolution.

With the increase in awareness of environmental rights, climate change litigation is rapidly evolving with novel claims and theories being tested around the world. At the same time, judicial doctrine and decisions are creating challenges for both plaintiffs and defendants, including governments and industries. What can we expect from climate-related litigation against oil and gas companies moving forward? What is the role of Alternative Dispute Resolutions (ADR) under Oil & Gas related disputes? These and other important climate litigation issues will be discussed by our panel.

SustainabilityFocusHumanRightsIn this session we will look at how human rights issues can arise and are being dealt with in international arbitration.

SUSTAINABILITY FOCUS sessions marked as such are part of the IBA Annual Conference 2022 sustainability focus on Tuesday and Thursday, grouping sessions discussing different aspects of ESG and sustainability across the different legal fields.

This session will look at the potential liability of employers, corporations and officers for breaching their duties to provide for the psychological safety of their workers and for exposing them to workplace stress. It will outline the new international standardISO45003‑2021- Psychological Health & Safety at Work and will consider the investigation process where there has been an incident or complaint and what steps employers should be taking and the different approaches taken in different jurisdictions around the globe.

In a world in which the exchange of services and of intangible goods is of ever greater relevance, certainty about applying acceptable transfer prices for all countries involved has become increasingly important. If transfer prices are not accepted by any one country, fast and efficient ways to resolve disputes either among the authorities themselves or with the help of a third party or a court are key for legal certainty and, as a result, for keeping the economy running smoothly. This panel will discuss the implications of recent court decisions and explore all three stages outlined in the title: (a) finding the right transfer price, (b) steering through procedures between countries, and (c) resolving disputes through arbitration.