The International Organization for Mediation — the first intergovernmental legal organization anywhere dedicated to resolving international disputes through mediation — was formally inaugurated at its Hong Kong headquarters on October 20, 2025, before nearly 200 representatives of signatory and contracting parties.
The setting itself made a statement: IOMed occupies the Old Wan Chai Police Station, a heritage building converted for its new life as the seat of an international organization — the first IGO ever headquartered in Hong Kong.
At inauguration, 37 states had signed the founding convention and eight had ratified it, a list that began with China and spanned Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific. The founding members elected Teresa Cheng — Hong Kong's former Secretary for Justice and a veteran international arbitrator — as the organization's first Secretary-General.
IOMed's mandate covers three categories of dispute: between states; between a state and foreign investors or nationals; and international commercial disputes between private parties. Whether it can draw meaningful caseload across all three will be one of the defining questions in international dispute resolution over the coming decade — and its first commercial settlement, announced in May 2026, suggests the answer may come quickly.
