The Dubai Government Legal Affairs Department revealed in its latest periodic report that 2025 saw the graduation of four new cohorts under the Certified Mediators Training Programme, through its partnership with the International Mediation Institution for Civil and Commercial Dispute Resolution and the European Centre for Mediation. A total of 82 trainees completed the programme's requirements — a 9.3% increase compared with 2024 — accumulating 3,520 training hours in total.
The department noted that the total number of graduates since the programme's launch in 2022 through the end of 2025 reached 307 trainees, with a cumulative 13,195 training hours delivered by the department. Of those, 247 trainees — representing more than 80% of the total — were employees of government entities, reinforcing a culture of amicable settlement within the workplace ecosystem.
The report highlighted that the department has incorporated training in client representation skills during civil and commercial dispute mediation into its Continuing Professional Development programme, which targets all legal consultants registered in the Emirate of Dubai. This makes it the first regulatory body in the world to include such training among its mandatory programmes for qualifying lawyers and legal consultants. A total of 2,999 legal consultants benefited from the programme last year.
The department noted that, as a continuation of its partnership efforts with the International Mediation Centre and in response to its attainment of a seven-star rating in the benchmarking programme conducted by the Dubai Government Excellence Programme — which concluded during 2025 — it completed its work towards establishing the Dubai International Mediation Centre.
These efforts were crowned by the Dubai Executive Council's approval to establish the Dubai International Mediation Centre, specialised in methods for avoiding and amicably resolving disputes, and its classification as one of the strategic projects approved by the Executive Council during 2025.
The report also noted the department's participation as a keynote speaker at numerous local and international events aimed at raising awareness within the business community about dispute mediation. These included workshops and knowledge sessions delivered by the department before officials of JAMS, the United States-based institution ranked first globally in providing mediation services.
In addition, through its partnership with the International Mediation Institution, the department succeeded in reaching consensus on the importance of promoting mediation practices in government dispute resolution among the institution's member states. This resulted in the formation of a global committee within the institution, with the department as a member and as chair of one of its sub-committees.
The sub-committee is dedicated to promoting mediation practice in disputes where government entities are a party, by conducting studies across all continents of the world on any form of mediation in government disputes — even if partial or limited in scope — alongside specialised surveys and research in partnership with relevant stakeholders in target countries, with the ultimate aim of developing a global comparative model that draws on the department's pioneering experience. The model is designed to encourage governments to adopt mediation in their disputes while providing the methodology and tools to support that adoption.
The Director General of the department, Dr Luay Mohammed Balhoul, affirmed that the department has championed the mediation skills training project for civil and commercial disputes since 2022, as part of its role in implementing the strategic priorities of the Dubai Plan and the emirate's orientation towards supporting alternative dispute resolution, by advancing mediation skills as one of the most important alternative methods for resolving disputes amicably.
He added that the department has established a working methodology encompassing capacity building and skills development to equip practitioners with the necessary tools to resolve disputes to the highest standards of reliability and transparency, promote a culture of mediation among the community and clients in line with global best practices, and strive to assist governments and countries in adopting the model developed by the department — once framed as a pioneering practice supported by comparative studies, surveys, and research — thereby reinforcing efforts to enhance the standing of the Emirate of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates in global competitiveness indices.