THE AUTHOR:
Tania Figueroa Abad, Associate at Aizenstatd Legal
The Guatemala’s Arbitration Act (“GAA”) governs both domestic and international commercial arbitration under a single normative framework modeled on the 1985 UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (“Model Law”). However, while incorporating the Model Law, it remained unclear whether the grounds for annulment and for opposing enforcement of a domestic award could become duplicative, allowing a ground already rejected on annulment to be invoked again at the enforcement stage. This results in the same grounds being litigated twice, once on annulment and again in opposition to enforcement, undermining the efficiency that should characterize the enforcement of an arbitral award.
Annulment of Arbitral Awards Under Guatemalan Law
It is widely recognized that parties choose arbitration because it offers an alternative dispute resolution mechanism that can deliver a decision more swiftly than litigation before ordinary courts, among other advantages. Ideally, once an arbitral award is rendered, the parties comply with it in good faith. In practice, however, this is not always the case.
In Guatemala, the losing party may challenge an arbitral award through an annulment proceeding (recurso de revisión) (see Article 43 of the GAA). Although the GAA is inspired by the Model Law, the legislature chose to designate this remedy as a “revisión,” rather than “annulment” which is the terminology commonly used in many jurisdictions that have adopted Model Law based legislation. The grounds for revisión, however, mirror those of the Model Law and are exhaustive.
Revisión is not an appeal. The losing party cannot simply raise general grievances against the award. Instead, it must rely on one or more of the statutory grounds that permit the filing of the revisión. Once the court determines that such grounds have been invoked, the judges must admit the application and decide whether to confirm or annul the award. Notably, the law also authorizes the judges to modify the arbitral tribunal’s decision (see Article 43(1) of the GAA). I disagree with this feature of the statute, although a detailed discussion of that issue falls outside the scope of this insight.
Once the revisión proceeding has been resolved, and the confirmed award remains unsatisfied, the prevailing party may seek its enforcement. Enforcement may also be requested while the revisión application is still pending; in that event, the enforcement proceedings must be suspended until the revision proceeding is decided and may resume once the order rejecting the revisión becomes final (see Article 48(3) of the GAA and the decision of the Constitutional Court of February 17, 2026, case No. 8294-2025).
Re-litigation Of Grounds at the Enforcement Stage
However, rather than establishing a streamlined mechanism for the enforcement of Guatemalan arbitral awards, the GAA sets out identical grounds both for annulment of the award and for opposition to its enforcement (see Article 47 of the GAA). At first glance, this might not appear problematic. In practice, however, it can delay compliance with the award. In the absence of clear rules preventing it, the losing party may raise in the enforcement stage the same grounds that were already rejected in the revisión proceeding.
In other words, a party whose revisión application has been unsuccessful may still oppose enforcement on the basis of the very same grounds that were previously dismissed. This results in unnecessary procedural duplication, particularly for the award creditor.
If a court has already ruled on a revisión application, that decision should in principle be sufficient for the enforcement judge to summarily reject any opposition based on the same grounds. A decision on the same issue should produce preclusive effects with respect to the grounds examined, preventing them from being re-litigated during enforcement proceedings. In Guatemala, however, these decisions do not appear to have such an effect, as the losing party may effectively re-argue matters that were already decided when the revisión was dismissed.
Other jurisdictions have already addressed this issue. German law, for example, provides that grounds for setting aside in an enforcement procedure should not be considered where an application for annulment based on those same grounds has already been rejected (see, for instance, Section 1060(2) of the German Code of Civil Procedure).
This does not leave the award debtor without protection. The debtor should still be able to raise defenses that genuinely relate to the effectiveness of the award, such as payment, settlement, or set-off. In Guatemala, the Constitutional Court has recognized that the party against whom enforcement is sought may invoke defenses that arose after the award was rendered (see Constitutional Court decision of April 19, 2023, case No. 55-2023).
The problem becomes even more pronounced when the parties have waived the revisión remedy in their arbitration agreement. While the GAA requires a timely objection during the arbitral proceedings as a condition for certain revisión grounds to be considered (see Article 7(2) of the Arbitration Act), it does not establish an equivalent rule to raise the same grounds during the enforcement stage. As a result, a party may have failed to raise any objection during the arbitration and, regardless of whether it waived the revisión remedy, still be able to oppose enforcement of the award. The statute does not impose any restriction in this respect. It is therefore conceivable that a party could expressly waive the revisión remedy yet still seek to resist enforcement of the award on the very same grounds that could have been raised in the revisión proceeding.
A Possible Legislative Amendment
This situation creates tension with both procedural efficiency and the pro-enforcement principle underlying arbitration. Rather than promoting compliance with arbitral awards, the current Guatemalan statutory framework allows the same grounds to be revisited at the challenge and enforcement phases.
To avoid this form of double judicial control over Guatemalan arbitral awards and to facilitate their enforcement, a legislative amendment to Article 47 of the GAA should be considered. Such a reform would empower judges to dismiss opposition based on grounds already rejected in revisión proceedings (including those that were not raised because the right to do so had already lapsed), while allowing opposition only when based on defenses affecting the effectiveness of the award that arose after it was rendered.
This reflection does not concern the regime applicable to foreign arbitral awards whose recognition and enforcement is sought in Guatemala under the 1958 New York Convention or the 1975 Inter-American Convention on International Commercial Arbitration. In those cases, judicial control follows a different logic derived from the State’s international obligations.
Accordingly, the considerations presented here are limited to the system governing the annulment and enforcement of Guatemalan domestic arbitral awards, where the current legal framework permits the reiteration of grounds that have already been examined during revisión proceedings.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tania Figueroa Abad is a Lawyer and Notary Public from Guatemala City who holds a law degree from Universidad Rafael Landívar (2025), with six years of professional experience focusing on the enforcement of arbitral awards, arbitration, and constitutional litigation. She is an Associate at Aizenstatd Legal, a member of CEIA-40 and Young ICCA, and a member of the roster of Secretaries of the Dispute Resolution Commission of the Chamber of Industry of Guatemala (“CRECIG”). She also serves as an Assistant at the Constitutional Law Legal Clinic of the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences of Universidad Rafael Landívar.
*The views and opinions expressed by authors are theirs and do not necessarily reflect those of their organizations, employers, or Daily Jus, Jus Mundi, or Jus Connect.
