I mentioned here that Paraguay had joined the MPIA in early May. Since then, Malaysia has joined too, bringing us to 29 parties (counting the EU and its 27 member states as one). But the bigger news is that there has been a successful transition to a partially re-composed arbitrator pool. As MPIA arbitrator Joost Pauwelyn explained on LinkedIn: "On 1 June 2025, 5 of the 10 arbitrators, randomly selected, were replaced by 5 new arbitrators, appointed by consensus of all WTO Members participating in the MPIA (one of the 5 selected arbitrators was re-appointed) ... ." The official announcement is here.
The four new arbitrators are:
- Mr Ichiro Araki (Japan)
- Ms. Ana Caetano (Brazil)
- Mr Esteban B. Conejos Jr. (Philippines)
- Mr. Paul Richard O'Connor (Australia)
The original arbitrator who was replaced but then re-appointed is Ms Locknie HSU (Singapore).
The four new arbitrators have all served as WTO panelists before (the links are to the WorldTradeLaw.net pages with the panels they served on).
It's also worth noting that Japan joined the MPIA in 2023 and the Philippines joined in 2024, and now each country has a citizen on the MPIA. That's not the main reason to become a party to the MPIA, but it's something for those governments who are not currently parties to think about.
The original five arbitrators who remain in the pool are:
- Mr Mateo Diego-Fernández ANDRADE (Mexico)
- Mr Thomas COTTIER (Switzerland)
- Mr Alejandro JARA (Chile)
- Mr Joost PAUWELYN (Belgium)
- Mr Guohua YANG (China)
And the following four original arbitrators are no longer serving:
- Ms Valerie HUGHES (Canada)
- Mr José Alfredo Graça LIMA (Brazil)
- Ms Claudia OROZCO (Colombia)
- Dr Penelope RIDINGS (New Zealand)
