Speech by Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Law and Ministry of Social and Family Development Eric Chua at the ‘Walking the Line: Ethics, Advocacy and Integrity in Mediation Practice’ Seminar by SIMI and LawSoc

Introduction

1. Friends of the legal fraternity, both from Singapore and abroad, a very good morning to everyone.

2. To our guests from overseas, welcome to Singapore. Today is the last day of the Singapore Convention Week (“SC Week”).

3. It has been an extremely busy and intense week. There’s a real buzz of energy in the air and I hope each of you have had an enriching experience professionally and an enjoyable experience personally, not just from listening to the engaging speakers and learning about dispute resolution, but also because of the old friends you have met, and the new friends you have made.

4. This year’s SC Week is even more special, because Singapore is celebrating 60 years of independence. We celebrated our National Day about three weeks ago, although you can still catch a glimpse of the celebratory mood, for instance our national flag hanging from apartments and buildings, or national day songs still playing in public spaces.

5. For me personally, at least, today’s event is also special as this is my first SC Week event since joining the Ministry of Law. I was away for the most part of the previous week, with Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Japan. He received a Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun from the Japanese government. That is a huge honour for him, and also for the people of Singapore. We also took the chance to catch up with Singaporeans who were in Osaka and Tokyo, and celebrated National Day at the Singapore Pavilion at the Osaka Expo.

6. Now in the spirit of full disclosure, I am not a lawyer by training. However, I was especially interested in today’s Seminar as mediation is a topic that bears significant relevance to my work in the Ministry of Social and Family Development, and to my work as a Member of Parliament as well. That is because mediation is an important ingredient for building a harmonious society and today, I would like to cover three key points:

a. First, Singapore’s approach to encouraging mediation within the community.

b. Second, Singapore’s contributions to facilitating mediation in the commercial space.

c. And finally, some ideas on the way forward for the mediation community.

Mediation in the community space

7. First, on the role of mediation in the community. Mediation is an important part of our social fabric, and has outsized importance given Singapore’s context.

8. We are a multi-racial, multi-cultural population that lives in close knit spaces. Our population density, as a city state, is over 8,000 people per square kilometres, one of the most densely populated cities in the world. And more than 80% of our resident population live in public housing. That leaves us vulnerable to facing many community disputes, that do not fall into the category of law and order disputes and are not appropriate to be resolved via litigation. Nor would litigation be desirable as it would severely stretch our Courts’ resources.

9. Take for instance, community disputes concerning noise. Over the past three years, public agencies have received more than 90,000 pieces of feedback. On average, that is around 2,500 complaints every month, or over 80 complaints every single day. Now imagine if our courts had to deal with all these complaints!

10. Therefore, not only does mediation help to manage community disputes in an amicable manner that preserves relationships between parties, but it also ensures efficient use of public resources.

11. I can personally attest to this because I’ve seen how mediation can transform relationships. Now, let me quickly share a story.

12. Two neighbours in my constituency lived next door to each other, in fact for over twenty years, caught in what seemed like an intractable dispute. Their kitchens, by design, were side by side, separated by a wall, with their rubbish chute only a foot apart. One neighbour had to regularly “bang” his rubbish chute door hard to squeeze his rubbish through a tight opening, while his neighbour interpreted this noise as deliberate harassment. This led to retaliatory behaviour which was perceived as racial discrimination against the neighbour and tensions soon grew.

13. I think I see a lot of you following this story quite intensively. I think you have had similar experiences. Thankfully, they both agreed to attend the mediation session at the Community Mediation Centre, or “CMC”. Through mediation, they finally understood each other’s perspectives. And the solution was a simple fix. They installed buffers on the rubbish chute door, which the neighbour agreed to do. But the real breakthrough was in helping them see past their own assumptions that they had before they got together.

14. This is the power of mediation, turning conflicts into conversations, misunderstandings into mutual respect.

15. So what are the key parts of our community mediation ecosystem? The CMC, that was set up in 1998, obviously plays an important role. Today, this ecosystem is not just maintained by MinLaw or the legal community alone. Instead, it has become a whole-of-nation undertaking, with multiple agencies as well as grassroots leaders involved.

16. Any relevant organisation or public agency that comes across community disputes, such as the Police, Housing Development Board and Town Councils is authorised to issue Mediation Directions and refer suitable cases for mediation by the CMC.

17. In 2024, we also enhanced the Community Disputes Management Framework. This was through the Community Disputes Resolution (Amendment) Act, passed in November last year, which incorporated feedback from stakeholders and the public. Under the Act, the Community Relations Unit was set up to handle severe disputes over noise and hoarding. It is now in its trial phase, in Tampines.

18. The CMC has also made itself more accessible by setting up more satellite mediation venues at various community clubs.

19. We have also been growing mediation capabilities at the community level, including developing mediation skills among grassroots leaders to informally mediate disputes. Grassroots leaders are expected to be the first port of call for disputes between neighbours. Today, around 90% of neighbour noise feedback is resolved after grassroots and other community leaders or HDB officers help both sides to reach an amicable compromise.

20. Finally, enforcement is also strengthened under this framework. If a mediation is successful, the settlement agreement can be registered as a Community Disputes Resolution Tribunals Order. This will instil confidence in the process.

Mediation in the Commercial Space

21. Social harmony, stability: these are important for Singapore and our diverse society. Just as important, for a small country like us which relies on external trade and investment to grow our economy, is a stable and trusted legal system, with clear avenues to resolve commercial disputes.

22. Singapore has worked hard to promote the use of mediation in commercial disputes. It is now an established part of our dispute resolution ecosystem, along with arbitration and litigation. It works particularly well for parties seeking a less adversarial approach and for those who remain interested in preserving business relationships. In fact, some say mediation may come more naturally to Asian countries.

23. Asia’s prominence in the global economy will continue growing, and we believe that mediation will become more prevalent as a dispute resolution tool. That was why we moved early and studied the mediation landscape by setting up the International Commercial Mediation Working Group in 2013. It was on the basis of its recommendations that we launched the Singapore International Mediation Centre (SIMC) in 2014.

24. To ensure that mediation standards could be independently assessed and certified, we also established the Singapore International Mediation Institute, or “SIMI”, in 2014 to accredit mediation training providers and mediators.

25. Today, SIMC complements the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) and Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) in providing the full suite of world-class dispute resolution options. Its caseload has grown steadily over the past 11 years, which is a powerful testimony to the increasing acceptance of mediation as a flexible, and cost-effective means of resolving disputes, even the most complex ones involving billions of dollars.

26. Furthermore, these pieces of the puzzle do not work in isolation but come together to present a more complete picture. These institutions collaborate closely to enable better outcomes. For example, the arbitration-mediation-arbitration protocol offered by SIAC and SIMC combines the more amicable approach of mediation with the ease of enforcing arbitral awards internationally through the New York Convention, to foster greater confidence in the resolution process.

27. Alongside SIMC, I am pleased to see that the legal industry has also organised itself to provide alternative avenues to pursing mediation, namely The Law Society of Singapore’s Mediation Scheme. More options can only mean greater accessibility and awareness-building, which serves end users better.

28. However, beyond growing the mediation sector within our own borders, Singapore has also played an early role in shaping the wider international mediation landscape, through the Singapore Convention on Mediation which was signed in August 2019.

29. The Convention strengthens cross-border enforcement of mediated settlement agreements. Under the Convention, businesses with a mediated settlement agreement that needs to be enforced across borders can do so by applying directly to the courts of countries that have ratified the treaty, instead of having to separately enforce the settlement agreement as a contract in accordance with each country’s domestic process.

30. This harmonised framework saves significant time and costs. It also addresses a major concern over the enforceability of mediation settlements, which previously discouraged businesses from pursuing mediation.

31. Today, we have 19 parties to the Convention, from all over the world. Many more countries remain interested in ratifying and acceding to the Convention and are studying it closely. With more jurisdictions becoming parties, businesses will benefit as mediation becomes an increasingly viable option when dealing with foreign parties. This will in turn reduce the friction caused by disputes and strengthen the flow of trade and commerce.

The Way Forward for Mediation

32. Therefore, mediation is an integral part of Singapore’s society and economy, and we remain strongly committed to growing the mediation sector. Let me conclude by offering my views on where the mediation industry can look to continue developing in the coming years.

33. First, we need to continue building trust and confidence amongst potential users. Mediators must demonstrate high standards of ethics.

34. Transparency, avoiding conflicts of interest, ensuring confidentiality and neutrality throughout the process – these are all conduct expected of a mediator. This is particularly critical in the context of mediation, where disputing parties have entrusted the mediator to assist them in their efforts to reach an end to their dispute.

35. And the fact that there are so many of you here today, on the very last day of a very busy week, to discuss Ethics and Integrity in mediation, just goes to show that all of you in this hall believe in this as well.

36. Next, to continue developing Singapore as an international commercial mediation hub, we must continue to focus on building our mediators’ cultural competencies. Mediation will be used more widely across the world and involve parties from different cultural backgrounds, as disputes become more global.

37. This is why platforms such as SC Week are so valuable – people from all over the world congregate to meet each other, exchange ideas and build ties. I am especially pleased to see that we have speakers from several overseas countries today, including China and India.

38. Finally, mediators will need to develop familiarity with new and specialised areas of disputes that are emerging, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), green energy, cryptocurrency and Intellectual Property (IP) to name a few, as well as new tools that are at our disposal.

39. In IP, for example, because disputes are territorial, mediation has the advantage of consolidating disputes in several jurisdictions into one proceeding instead of, say, having several parallel litigations. And as the most valuable products in the world are increasingly based on intangible assets like technology and know-how – think of the smart phone in your hand or ChatGPT that you used recently – we can expect the volume of IP disputes to rise over the horizon.

40. Mediators also need to be familiar with new tools that can transform the way that they work. AI can make mediators more productive. For instance, it can help to condense large volumes of documents into chronologies or summarise points of differences between parties. AI could also be used to predict outcomes, to give an idea of the strength of parties’ cases if they were to litigate

41. However, it is not just proficiency with these tools that is important. We need to think critically about them and consider ethical issues. AI models are trained on past data. How do we know, for example, that we have accounted for built in biases when we rely on AI’s interpretation or summary of a legal position?

Conclusion

42. In closing, there are plenty of new areas and new issues for all of us to explore in the mediation sector. I hope that we continue to have Seminars such as today’s event to grapple with these issues.

43. Lastly, I would like to thank SIMI and LawSoc for the invitation, and I wish everyone an enriching and wonderful Seminar for the rest of the day.

44. Thank you very much.

Last updated on 29 August 2025