Maritime Law · 15.09.2026

Foreign Arbitral Award in Vietnam: Recognition, Refusal and Appeal

Enforcing a foreign arbitral award in Vietnam: the three-year window, the documents, the Article 459 grounds, and a decided case where a court was told it may not retry the dispute.

Lawyer UnilawReading time: 7 min

By Lawyer Nguyen Nhu Hai – UniLaw LLC

You won the arbitration. The debtor sits in Vietnam, and so do its assets. Turning an award into money means recognition, and enforcing a foreign arbitral award in Vietnam follows a defined route with a short list of defences. The risk is not usually the defence list. It is a first-instance court that tries to re-hear the dispute. One decided case shows both the risk and the cure.

A foreign arbitral award in Vietnam, refused and then enforced

Decision No. 21/2024/QDPT-KDTM of 20 May 2024 — Superior People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City, reversing the first-instance decision of the Tay Ninh court.

A Dubai company held an ICC award, case ICC 24358/HTG dated 11 February 2021, against a Vietnamese company in Tay Ninh. A sole arbitrator, appointed by the ICC International Court of Arbitration under the ICC Rules in force from 1 March 2017, had issued a final award. The Dubai company applied to enforce it in Vietnam.

The objections, and what the first court did with them

The Vietnamese respondent objected on five fronts. First, the applicant’s power of attorney was defective. Second, the arbitrator had relied on documents that were neither originals nor certified copies. Third, because the hearing ran online, the parties could not properly access and test the evidence. Fourth, notice had gone through a broker who was not its legal representative. Lastly, the award ignored Vietnamese Commercial Law 2005 on trade usages and on pre-shipment inspection.

The first-instance court accepted the objections and refused recognition. In doing so it went back through the evidence, the assessment of that evidence, the online hearing, the cargo inspection and the delivery.

Why the appeal court reversed

The Court of Appeal held that this was not the court’s job. On an application to recognise a foreign arbitral award, the Vietnamese court may not retry the dispute the arbitrators decided. It may only check the award and the documents filed with it against the procedural provisions of the Civil Procedure Code.

Because the first court had re-examined the merits, its decision could not stand. The ICC award fell into none of the refusal grounds, so the Court of Appeal recognised it and allowed enforcement in Vietnam.

That holding is the single most useful sentence in Vietnamese enforcement practice, and it is worth quoting in any application.

The route in for a foreign arbitral award in Vietnam

Vietnam is a party to the New York Convention. Article 424 of the Civil Procedure Code therefore lets a Vietnamese court consider an award from another Convention state, and also from a non-Convention state on the basis of reciprocity. The award must be the tribunal’s final award, disposing of the whole dispute, ending the arbitration and binding on the parties.

From there, Article 451 sets the deadline: three years from the day the award takes legal effect. The applicant files with the Ministry of Justice, where a treaty routes it that way, or directly with the competent Vietnamese court. Time lost to force majeure or objective obstacles does not count against the three years, but you have to prove it.

Where the Ministry receives the file, Article 454 gives it five working days to pass it to the court. Article 455 then gives the court five working days to accept the case and notify the parties, the prosecutor and the Ministry.

What you file

On documents, Article 453 keeps the list short. You file the original or a certified copy of the award, and the original or a certified copy of the arbitration agreement. Anything in a foreign language needs a Vietnamese translation that has been properly notarised or certified.

The application itself falls under Article 452. One requirement catches foreign applicants out: if the debtor has no residence, workplace or head office in Vietnam, the application must state where its assets are and what they are. So locate the assets before you file, not after.

Grounds for refusing a foreign arbitral award in Vietnam

Article 459 splits the grounds in two, and the split matters.

Under paragraph 1, the court refuses only where the respondent produces valid evidence of one of these:

a party lacked capacity to make the arbitration agreement;
the arbitration agreement is invalid under the law the parties chose, or failing a choice, under the law of the seat;
the respondent received no proper and timely notice of the arbitrator’s appointment or of the procedure, or could not present its case for another legitimate reason;
the award decides a dispute outside the reference, or goes beyond it — though a severable part within the reference may still be enforced;
the tribunal’s composition or the procedure departed from the agreement, or from the law of the seat where the agreement is silent;
the award is not yet binding on the parties; or
a competent authority at the seat, or of the law applied, has set the award aside or suspended it.

Under paragraph 2, the court may refuse on its own initiative in two cases: the dispute is not arbitrable under Vietnamese law, or recognition would be contrary to the fundamental principles of Vietnamese law.

Notice what is absent from both lists. Nothing there lets a court disagree with how the tribunal weighed the evidence.

The hearing, and who sits

The application goes before a panel of judges. Article 458 of three judges, one presiding. A prosecutor from the same-level procuracy must attend, although the hearing proceeds if the prosecutor does not appear.

Both parties, or their representatives, are expected. A first absence with good reason postpones the hearing. A second proper summons that goes unanswered does not, and the panel may proceed without the absent party. That is what happened on appeal in Decision No. 21/2024, where the respondent stayed away.

Appeals, and a court structure that changed

Here the current text matters more than any older summary. Under the consolidated Civil Procedure Code, Document No. 21/VBHN-VPQH of 12 February 2026, Article 462 now provides that the provincial people’s court reviews a decision of the regional people’s court on appeal or protest, within one month of receiving the file, extendable to two months where a clarification is needed under Article 457(1).

The appellate panel is again three judges, and it may uphold the first-instance decision, vary it in whole or in part, suspend the appeal, or discontinue it. Decision No. 21/2024 is an example of the second power in use.

So check which court hears your application before you file. Guidance written before the 2025 amendments names a different structure.

What this means for shipping awards

Most shipping awards against Vietnamese parties come from London or Singapore, under LMAA or ICC rules or an ad hoc clause in a charterparty or bill of lading. The route above applies to all of them.

Diary the three years from the date the award became effective, not from the date of the hearing.
Get the award and the arbitration agreement certified, and the translations notarised, early. This step is slower than people expect.
Identify Vietnamese assets and name them in the application.
Expect the merits to be re-argued anyway, and answer it with the rule in Decision No. 21/2024 rather than with the facts.
If the vessel is the asset, consider arrest in parallel, because an award does not by itself hold a ship.

Legal basis

Civil Procedure Code, consolidated as Document No. 21/VBHN-VPQH of 12 February 2026 (Code No. 92/2015/QH13 as amended, most recently by Law No. 85/2025/QH15) — Article 424 (awards eligible for recognition; treaty and reciprocity); Article 425 (right to apply); Article 451 (three-year period); Article 452 (contents of the application, including assets in Vietnam); Article 453 (documents and translations); Article 454 (Ministry of Justice transfer, five working days); Article 455 (acceptance, five working days); Article 456 (transfer between courts); Article 458 (hearing, three judges, procuracy, absence); Article 459 (grounds for refusal); Article 460 (service of the decision); Article 462 (appeal to the provincial people’s court).
New York Convention 1958 on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, to which Vietnam is a party, applied through Article 424(1)(a).
Law on Commercial Arbitration, which defines foreign arbitration and foreign arbitral awards for the purposes of Article 424(3).

How we handle a foreign arbitral award in Vietnam

Unilaw acts for award creditors enforcing LMAA, ICC and SIAC awards against Vietnamese parties, and for Vietnamese respondents resisting enforcement on the Article 459 grounds. The work is documentary and it is won on preparation: certification, translation, asset identification, and a clear answer to any attempt to reopen the merits.

For the wider practice see our Vietnam maritime lawyer page. To hold a vessel while you enforce, see ship arrest in Vietnam. On the underlying cargo claim, see cargo claim in Vietnam. If the port authority is holding the ship rather than a court, see vessel detention in Vietnam. On crew wages and repatriation, see seafarer wages in Vietnam. For flagging, mortgages and priority, see ship registration in Vietnam. Further judgments sit in our maritime law library.