The BCDR-AAA Arbitration Rules were originally adopted in 2010 and were closely modeled on the ICDR International Arbitration Rules in force at the time. During the ensuing years, several institutions, including the ICDR, substantially revised their rules, and BCDR-AAA was naturally alert to those developments. It was thus felt that some changes were needed to bring the 2010 BCDR-AAA Arbitration Rules into line with evolving practices. Further impetus for the revision of the rules came from the

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... enactment by Bahrain in 2015 of arbitration legislation that adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration for both domestic and international disputes. This set a standard to which BCDR-AAA also needed to adjust by modernizing its own rules. At the end of 2015, BCDR-AAA's Board of Trustees (the 'Board') entrusted a three-member Rules Review Committee (the 'Committee'), composed of Dr. Antonio R. Parra, former ICSID Deputy Secretary-General, Mr. Adrian Winstanley, OBE, former LCIA Director General, and the author of this note, with the task of drafting revised arbitration rules for consideration by the Board. The Committee took the 2010 BCDR-AAA Arbitration Rules as its base, enhancing and augmenting these, while also referring to the latest rules of leading international and regional arbitration institutions, as well as to the 2010 UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules. The Committee was thus able to submit to the Board a set of draft rules embodying what it considered to be the best standards in international arbitration, suitably tailored to local and regional needs. The draft rules were made public in September 2016 at a meeting on the sidelines of the International Bar Association (IBA) Annual Conference in Washington, DC. At the same time, they were made available for review on the BCDR-AAA website, and invitations were sent to a number of practitioners for review and feedback. Written comments on the draft rules were received by BCDR-AAA in the fall of 2016. The Committee carefully considered all observations made by commentators and incorporated amendments that it believed would further enhance the rules. The revised rules were subsequently adopted by the Board.