International Courts and Tribunals

Third-party litigation funding (TPF) is a rapidly expanding industry composed of speculative investors who finance legal claims in exchange for influence over case management and a contingency in the recovery.[1] The potentially high damage awards (recently averaging $500 million per dispute) characteristic of investor-state arbitration (ISDS) under the bilateral investment treaty (BIT) regime[2] have made it a new and highly attractive market for TPF.

This Insight analyzes the immunity of Judge Aydin Sefa Akay, a Turkish citizen and a former judge of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, who was a judge at the United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (Mechanism) since July 25, 2016, assigned to the case of Prosecutor v. Ngirabatware, until June 2018.[1] The Mechanism was created to perform residual functions of the now terminated International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.