Professor Dr Nael Bunni, 1939 - 2025
A recent talk at Dubai Arbitration Week asked the audience to consider the merits of selecting the engineer arbitrator over the lawyer arbitrator. The dispute resolution world's cognoscenti knew to appoint Professor Dr Nael Bunni (who originally qualified and practised as a Chartered Engineer) as an arbitrator over any lawyer. Dubai was one of a number of cities that Nael spent some time in. Born 1400 miles away in Kirkuk, Iraq, in April, 1939, a scholarship took him to 1960s Manchester for master's degree studies. That was where he met the then Anne Carroll, a Dubliner, who he was married to for not quite sixty years. Anne who also went on to practice as an arbitrator predeceased Nael in 2020. After taking his PhD at Queen Mary, London in 1964, and then returning to Iraq for several years the political turmoil in that country led him to move to the Republic of Ireland in 1969.
It is a stock phrase to say that it is difficult to sum up someone's professional achievements and recognition. But Nael's distinction as an engineer, arbitrator, conciliator and adjudicator is well recorded. Space just does not allow for all the positions he held and awards he was given to be set out. An early notable professional achievement was, when he was about 45, to write 'Construction Insurance.' This became by the time of the last edition, in 2022, Risk and Insurance in Construction co-authored with one of his six children Lydia. There were other books and many papers. Nael was international president of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators 2000-2001; Chair of the Irish Branch 1986-1989 and (in more recent years) was the Irish Branch Patron. The Society of Construction Law awarded Dr Bunni their President’s Medal in 2021 to mark his significant work promoting the study and understanding of construction law.
We were privileged that he was associated with these Chambers.
Nael lectured, spoke to and trained thousands of people all around the world. A generation of students at Trinity College Dublin benefited from his work in establishing and championing Trinity's Diploma in Construction Law from 1996 until ill health saw him cease teaching in the last year or two. Nael’s prowess and renown as a teacher, author and neutral was not confined to the British Isles: he was an international dispute resolution powerhouse. But importantly as one of innumerable online tributes posted in memory of Nael, on the day he passed away November, 25 2025, remarked he was : 'A wonderful and endlessly delightful man.. ' RIP Nael.
