Everything downstream — the tribunal’s jurisdiction, the award, its enforcement — rests on the arbitration agreement. Article II tells the ADGM Courts when to hold parties to their bargain and send them to arbitration.
Two effects, one clause
An arbitration agreement does two things at once. It confers jurisdiction on the tribunal over disputes within its scope (the positive effect), and it strips the parties of recourse to the courts for those disputes (the negative effect). Article II of the Convention obliges Contracting States to give effect to both — and the ADGM Courts, as a common-law forum, approach the clause as a commercial promise to be honoured rather than a technicality to be picked apart.
The writing requirement
Article II(2) requires the agreement to be in writing — a defined term that includes an arbitral clause in a contract or a separate agreement, signed by the parties or contained in an exchange of letters or telegrams. Modern practice, reflected in the 2006 UNCITRAL recommendation, reads this generously to accommodate incorporation by reference and contemporary means of communication. The question a court asks is whether there is a written record of consent to arbitrate, not whether a particular form has been observed.
Referral is mandatory
Under Article II(3), where a party brings before the court a matter covered by a valid arbitration agreement, the court shall refer the parties to arbitration at the request of one of them — unless the agreement is null and void, inoperative or incapable of being performed. The verb is not discretionary. The ADGM Courts will decline to hear a dispute that the parties agreed to arbitrate, provided a party asks to be referred; there is no referral of the court's own motion.
The word is shall: a valid clause takes the dispute out of court and into arbitration.
Separability and who decides
Two principles familiar to any arbitration practitioner shape the analysis. Separability treats the arbitration clause as autonomous, so that an attack on the main contract does not automatically defeat the clause. Competence-competence allows the tribunal to rule on its own jurisdiction in the first instance, with the court's fuller review reserved for the challenge or enforcement stage. Together they keep tactical jurisdictional challenges from stalling an arbitration before it has begun.
Key instruments: New York Convention 1958 (Article II); UNCITRAL Recommendation 2006 on Article II(2); ADGM Arbitration Regulations 2015. General information, not legal advice.