Justice for Micro, Small and Medium sized Enterprises
This project is led by Prof Petra Butler, Victoria University of Wellington in cooperation with various institutions, including BIICL (Prof Eva Lein).
Recent research indicates that the current default system of international dispute resolution, by litigation in national courts, is not satisfactory for Micro, Small and Medium sized Enterprises ("MSMEs"). MSMEs generally respond to this dissatisfaction with either artificially restrict their cross-border trade or expose themselves to unacceptable risks. This project examines how these dispute resolution risks for MSMEs engaged in domestic and cross-border trade and investment can be mitigated. The project sets out to explore four different lines of inquiry:
- the types of counter-party disputes encountered by MSME domestically and how they are resolved;
- the types of counter-party disputes encountered by MSME exporters and importers;
- the current approaches to resolving such cross-border disputes; and
- the response of MSMEs to alternative processes
