Malaysia has moved decisively toward ratifying the Singapore Convention on Mediation. On February 11, the Dewan Rakyat — the lower house of Parliament — passed the International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation Act, the domestic legislation needed to give the Convention force in Malaysian law.
The bill was steered through the chamber by M. Kulasegaran, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department for Law and Institutional Reform. Malaysia signed the Convention at its opening ceremony in Singapore in August 2019 but, like many signatories, has spent the intervening years building the implementing framework required before ratification.
Once the Act is in force and ratification follows, parties to cross-border commercial mediations will be able to enforce settlement agreements directly in Malaysian courts — without first converting them into judgments or arbitral awards. For a trading economy positioned between Singapore and Thailand, that is a meaningful upgrade to the dispute-resolution toolkit.
The move also intensifies a friendly regional competition. With the Asian International Arbitration Centre having just issued its Mediation Rules 2026 — including provisions for concurrent mediation alongside arbitration — Kuala Lumpur is assembling the legal infrastructure to keep more of the region's mediation work at home.
