Experience / Case study
Acting for Maersk at Mogadishu Port.
CAPABILITY
Disputes & Cross-Border · Maritime
CLIENT
Maersk, calling at Mogadishu
FORUMS
Arbitration and the Somali courts, in parallel
STATUS
Engagement concluded
THE SITUATION
Mogadishu Port is no backwater: the World Bank's 2024 index ranked it the most efficient container port in East Africa. With scheduled calls come the standard frictions of the trade — in forums international shipping lawyers do not know.
Cargo claims, contract disputes, agency questions — dry-shipping work is won on procedure and documents. But in Somalia those disputes land in a general court system with no dedicated commercial bench, and an arbitration framework resting on 1974 Civil Procedure Code provisions. A carrier that cannot enforce, or even navigate, locally is negotiating with one hand tied — and every unresolved claim reprices the trade.
WHAT WE DID
Two arenas at once.
Insaaf represented the line in Somalia across its dry-shipping disputes — in arbitration where the contracts sent them, and before the local courts where they had to be fought. Running both tracks at once takes knowing not just Somali law, but how Somali forums actually behave: what gets enforced, what gets re-argued, what should never be left to implication.
And the contracts that prevent round two.
Alongside the disputes, we drafted contracts for the line's Somali operations — built to hold up in both forums, informed by exactly where the partners knew the enforcement risks sat, having helped shape the port framework the disputes arose under.
THE OUTCOME
Shipping is the steadiest, least political stream of legal work in the Somali market — and the hardest to serve without genuine local court experience. This engagement is the firm's proof in that lane: disputes run to conclusion in both forums, and operating contracts left better than we found them.
The team — Mohamed Abdulkadir Ali · Hamza I. Abdullahi
Dry-shipping disputes are won on procedure and documents. We know both — in this port, in these courts.
WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU
If you are a shipping line, a freight forwarder, a P&I club or the counsel behind one, your Somali claims land on lawyers who have run this exact work — in the arbitration room and in the courtroom, at this port.
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