ICCA Announces the Recipient of the 2026 ICCA-Guillermo Aguilar-Alvarez Memorial Prize
ICCA is pleased to announce that Jonathan Brosseau-Rioux is the recipient of the third edition of the ICCA-Guillermo Aguilar-Alvarez Memorial Prize. The announcement took place during the Opening Ceremony of the 27th ICCA Congress in Madrid on 13 April 2026.
In making its decision, the Advisory Board noted the following:
“The 2026 Advisory Board of the ICCA-Guillermo Aguilar-Alvarez Prize is very pleased to award the biennial prize to Jonathan Brosseau-Rioux for his work “Applicable Ethical Framework in Commercial and Investment Arbitration”, which was a book chapter in the Cambridge Compendium of International Commercial and Investment Arbitration. In his thoughtful and carefully argued book chapter, Brosseau-Rioux addresses a central challenge in contemporary international arbitration: the absence of a clearly defined and consistently applied ethical framework governing counsel conduct. Drawing from comparative practice across jurisdictions and arbitral institutions, the chapter makes significant contributions toward resolving competing sources of ethical obligations that may apply to counsel, proposing an analytical framework for determining which standards should govern in a given arbitration. It is both scholarly and practical, and while the Committee did not agree with all its proposals, the work will help move ethical issues toward greater predictability and thereby enhance the integrity of commercial and investment arbitration proceedings. For these reasons, the Advisory Board recognizes the chapter as an outstanding contribution to the scholarship of international dispute resolution.”
The Advisory Committee also awarded an honourable mention to Mevelyn Ong:
“The 2026 Advisory Board of the ICCA-Guillermo Aguilar-Alvarez Prize is pleased to award runner-up recognition to Mevelyn Ong for her article “From Aspiration to Public Policy: Imprinting UNGP-Aligned Footprints of Corporate Responsibility and Accountability into the Shifting Sands of International Arbitration Practice,” published in the 2024 ICSID Review. With analytical rigor and originality, Ong confronts one of the most pressing challenges in contemporary international arbitration: the gap between aspirational “soft law” principles of corporate responsibility for human rights and the environment, as articulated in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), and their enforceability in arbitral practice. The article traces tribunals’ nascent but inconsistent recognition of corporate responsibility and exposes the misalignment between current enforcement mechanisms and the UNGPs’ broader vision of accountability. Ong explores the potential for tribunals to recognize a new international public policy upholding corporate responsibility—drawing a compelling analogy to the public policy against corruption—and examines its implications for admissibility, damages quantification, causality, and the longstanding premise that a State alone bears responsibility for full reparation. The Advisory Board is delighted to recognize her work as runner-up of the Prize.”
The selection process involved a total of 39 entries, out of which a Young ICCA Special Committee, constituted of Manini Brar, Eva Chan, Chizaram Mbah, Gustavo Santos Kulesza, and Katrine Tvede, shortlisted five entries. The shortlist was then reviewed by the Advisory Board, consisting of representatives from ICCA as well as friends and colleagues of Guillermo Aguilar Alvarez: Stefano Azzali, Lise Bosman, Louie Llamzon, Silvia Marchili, Santiago Montt and, Caline Mouawad.
The Prize was established in 2019 in memory of former ICCA Governing Board Member Guillermo Aguilar-Alvarez, and is awarded every second year during an ICCA Congress to the individual under 40 who has written the best published work on international arbitration, conciliation or other forms of dispute settlement over the past two years.