Last month, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit dismissed a case against a sovereign where the petitioners sought to recognize a foreign court judgment that confirmed a foreign arbitration award.
In Amaplat Mauritius Ltd. v. Zimbabwe Mining Dev. Corp., the appeals court disagreed with earlier precedent and held that US federal courts lack jurisdiction to hear such cases against sovereigns. The key takeaway is that to enforce an arbitration award against a foreign sovereign in the US, you must file your case within three years.
No exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act allows US Courts to recognize foreign judgments based on such awards.
International arbitration is popular, especially against sovereigns, because it provides comfort that a neutral arbitrator—not the courts of a party’s home country—will decide a dispute.
But winning an arbitration award is only half the battle. Such awards don’t have the force of law, so if a party refuses to comply, the prevailing party must ask a court to recognize and enforce it. Concerns about impartiality arise. Nobody is eager to return to the courts of the losing party’s country, especially if the losing party is a sovereign.
The New York Convention levels the playing field a bit. With limited exceptions, it requires courts to recognize and enforce a foreign arbitration award. There are 172 contracting states, including the US. Therefore, a prevailing party in an arbitration can seek judicial enforcement of a foreign arbitration award nearly anywhere assets of the losing party can be found.
But the US imposes a time limit for seeking such relief. In Amaplat, the petitioners missed the three-year window and instead tried to find another way to recover assets in the US. Although they seemingly had persuasive legal precedent in their favor, their effort failed.
Their dispute stemmed from a joint venture between the petitioners (two Mauritian mining companies) and Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation for mining nickel and platinum.
After Zimbabwe Mining improperly terminated their agreement, the petitioners began an arbitration in Zambia. The arbitration panel issued an award in 2014 for damages totaling $46.8 million, plus annual interest, in favor of the petitioners.
Under the New York Convention, the petitioners obtained a judgment of the High Court of Zambia empowering them to enforce the award in that country. However, they apparently were unable to find sufficient assets there.
In 2022, the petitioners sought to advance their cause in the US. By this time, it was too late to apply in the US for recognition and enforcement of the award under the New York Convention. So they asked the US District Court for the District of Columbia to recognize and enforce the judgment against the Republic of Zimbabwe, a sovereign nation.
Broadly speaking, the FSIA allows Zimbabwe to enjoy immunity from suits in the US. There are statutorily defined exceptions to such immunity, but unless an exception exists, the US courts lack subject matter jurisdiction over cases against sovereigns.
The petitioners argued, first, that the FSIA’s arbitration exception allowed enforcement of the judgment, and second, that Zimbabwe impliedly waived sovereign immunity as to enforcement. The district court held that the implied waiver exception allowed the court to exercise jurisdiction. But the DC Circuit rejected petitioners’ arguments and ordered the case dismissed.
If petitioners had, within three years of the date of the award, filed to recognize the arbitration award in the US, the FSIA’s “arbitration exception” would have provided the US with jurisdiction. But they didn’t file their case under the New York Convention or the Federal Arbitration Act, which implements the convention.
The DC Circuit noted that the petitioners applied under District of Columbia laws for domesticating foreign judgments, so they couldn’t rely on the FSIA’s arbitration exception.
For their implied-waiver argument, the petitioners relied on a 1993 decision by the Second Circuit—Seetransport Wiking Trader Schiffarhtsgesellschaft MBH & Co. v. Navimpex Centrala Navala. That court accepted subject matter jurisdiction to enforce a judgment that stemmed from an arbitration award governed by the New York Convention.
It stated that the cause of action to enforce the foreign judgment is within the scope of the sovereign agency’s implicit waiver of sovereign immunity, because the cause of action is so closely related to the claim for enforcement of the arbitral award.
However, the DC Circuit in Amaplat disagreed with the reasoning in Seetransport and held that Zimbabwe’s accession to the New York Convention allowed enforcement of arbitration awards, but didn’t impliedly waive immunity as to enforcement of court judgments arising from those awards.
The court stated that the “closely related” language in Seetransport “is too insubstantial a connection to establish strong evidence of a sovereign’s intent to waive its immunity.”
Given the Amaplat decision, the only path to enforcing an arbitration award against a sovereign in the US is to file pursuant to the FAA/New York Convention within three years.
The case is Amaplat Mauritius Ltd. v. Zimbabwe Mining Dev. Corp., D.C. Cir., No. 24-7030, decided 7/15/25.
This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.
Author Information
Kevin N. Ainsworth is chair of Mintz’s cross-border asset recovery practice.
Write for Us: Author Guidelines
To contact the editors responsible for this story: