An arbitral award made in the OHADA area is subject to neither opposition, nor appeal, nor cassation. Under the Uniform Act on Arbitration it can be attacked only by an application to set aside brought before the competent court of the member State, on six exhaustively listed grounds, and that application ceases to be admissible one month after service of the award bearing the enforcement order. Under the auspices of the Common Court of Justice and Arbitration, the challenge takes the form of a contestation of validity brought before the Court itself. Before the French judge, the debtor’s resistance is confined to the five complaints of article 1520 of the code of civil procedure.
A public works company loses an arbitration in Douala in March 2026 on a 2.8 million euro claim. Its first reflex is to ask counsel when the appeal will be heard. There will be none. Its second reflex is to look for a way of rehearing the case under cover of public policy. It will find none either, unless it shows one of the six defects the text lists. What remains is a timing question almost nobody sees: the period for acting has not started, and it will start only from an act its opponent has not yet performed.
This page sets out the routes available against an OHADA award, their grounds, their time limits, the court competent for each, and what remains possible in France when the creditor seeks enforcement there.
1. What is closed
The principle is stated unambiguously: an arbitral award is subject to neither opposition, nor appeal, nor cassation, and may only be the object of an application to set aside brought before the competent court in the member State (Uniform Act on Arbitration, article 25). That closure is the price of arbitration and, from the creditor’s standpoint, its main advantage.
A methodological consequence follows. An application to set aside is not a disguised appeal, and arguments complaining of the arbitrator’s assessment of the facts, reading of the contract or valuation of loss are bound to fail. The only useful ground is regularity, whether it concerns the existence of the arbitration agreement, the composition of the tribunal, compliance with the mission, due process, international public policy or the reasons given.
That economy applies to both systems OHADA organises, with different courts. It also applies, in spirit, before the French judge, whose review is just as narrow.
2. The six grounds of article 26
An application to set aside is admissible only on exhaustively listed grounds: where the tribunal ruled without an arbitration agreement or on an agreement that was void or expired; where it was irregularly composed or the sole arbitrator irregularly appointed; where it ruled without complying with the mission conferred on it; where due process was not respected; where the award is contrary to international public policy; where it gives no reasons (Uniform Act on Arbitration, article 26).
The first three complaints are demonstrated on documents and are prepared during the proceedings. Absence of an agreement means arguing the scope of the clause, its transmission on assignment of the contract or its extension to a group company. Irregular composition refers to compliance with the appointment mechanism stipulated, which gives the drafting of the clause its full importance. Excess of mission covers an arbitrator who rules ultra petita, decides ex aequo et bono without authority, or determines a question excluded from the submission.
The due process complaint is the most frequently invoked and the most often badly built. It is not enough to assert that the tribunal did not answer an argument: it must be shown that a document, an argument or an expert report was not put to the parties for discussion, or that the tribunal based its decision on a point raised of its own motion without inviting the parties to address it. The demonstration is built from the procedural record, not from the award alone.
The first complaint deserves development, because it is the most technical and often the most decisive. The arbitration agreement may be absent, void or expired, and each of those three situations calls for a different demonstration. Absence arises where the dispute concerns an order placed outside the framework contract, or a relationship formed with a group company that signed nothing. Nullity presupposes an attack on the validity of the clause itself, bearing in mind that it is independent of the main contract and survives the nullity of that contract (article 4). Expiry covers a clause confined to a term or attached to a contract the parties continued to perform without renewing, a frequent configuration in long commercial relationships.
3. Failure to give reasons, a ground peculiar to the system
The Uniform Act makes failure to give reasons a free standing ground of annulment, which has no direct equivalent in the French regime of international arbitration, where review is confined to the five complaints of article 1520 of the code of civil procedure. That difference has two opposite consequences depending on which side of the case one sits.
For the claimant in the arbitration it means ensuring that every head of the operative part is reasoned, including the secondary heads tribunals willingly dispatch in one sentence, such as interest, costs or the rejection of a counterclaim. An otherwise excellent award can be weakened by two inadequate lines on an ancillary item.
For the respondent it opens a ground of challenge that does not require proof of prejudice, only the finding of a failure. The argument must nonetheless target a genuine absence of reasons, and not their insufficiency measured against what the losing party would have liked to read, failing which it joins the category of disguised appeals the courts reject.
4. International public policy, and its limits
Conflict with international public policy is among the grounds of annulment, and it is invoked in almost every challenge. It is not however to be confused with conformity with the applicable law. An award that adopts a debatable interpretation of the contract, values loss generously or applies a rule the losing party considers outdated does not offend international public policy: it displeases.
The complaint succeeds on another ground, that of infringements of essential principles, such as corruption, fraud, breach of an international prohibition or disregard of fundamental rights of the defence. It then requires a demonstration fed by facts and documents, not a statement of principle. Courts in the area take care to contain the expansion of this ground, failing which it would become the appeal the text precisely closed.
The same ground appears, in similar terms, among the four grounds for refusing enforcement before the Common Court (OHADA Treaty, article 25) and among the five complaints available before the French Court of Appeal (code of civil procedure, article 1520). The common vocabulary should not conceal that each legal order defines its own international public policy, and that an argument rejected in Abidjan may usefully be made in Paris, or the reverse.
5. The article 27 time limit and its singular structure
An application to set aside is admissible as soon as the award is made and ceases to be admissible if it has not been brought within one month of service of the award bearing the enforcement order (article 27). That wording produces two effects the parties equally underestimate.
For the loser it means it may act immediately, without waiting for anything, and that it retains the ability to act so long as service of the enforced award has not taken place. Time appears to work for it, but that appearance is deceptive: a late and badly prepared challenge fares worse than an immediate one built on a procedural record that is still fresh.
For the winner it turns service into a strategic act. So long as it does not serve the award bearing the enforcement order, it leaves the period open and its title exposed. Obtaining enforcement and then serving without delay is therefore the first thing to do after the award, even before considering enforcement measures. The court seised of the enforcement application must in any event rule within a period not exceeding fifteen days (article 31), which makes that sequence fast when it is anticipated.
6. Contestation of validity before the Common Court
Where the award was made under the auspices of the Common Court of Justice and Arbitration, the litigation does not disperse among national courts. The challenge takes the form of a contestation of validity brought before the Court itself, on grounds that follow the logic of the four reasons for which enforcement may be refused, namely absence or nullity of the arbitration agreement, disregard of the mission, breach of due process and conflict with international public policy (OHADA Treaty, article 25).
The Court’s arbitration rules further organise two exceptional routes, revision, where a fact liable to have a decisive influence is discovered after the award, and third party opposition, available to a person who was not a party and whom the award prejudices. Both are rare in practice, but they deserve to be known by groups several of whose entities work on the same project without all being signatories.
That system concentrates review and makes it predictable, at the price of geographical distance and a timetable of its own. For a legal department comparing the two routes when drafting its clause, it is a serious argument in favour of administered arbitration, particularly where the contract is performed in several States of the area.
7. Resisting enforcement in France
Where the creditor comes to enforce in France, the losing party has a distinct and autonomous ground. An award made abroad is recognised or enforced if its existence is established and if it is not manifestly contrary to international public policy (code of civil procedure, article 1514), and enforcement is granted on application, without adversarial debate, by the judicial court of Paris (article 1516). Adversarial debate is restored on appeal.
The decision ruling on recognition or enforcement may indeed be appealed, and the Court of Appeal may refuse recognition only in the cases provided by the code (article 1525). Those cases are five: the tribunal wrongly upheld or declined jurisdiction, it was irregularly constituted, it ruled without complying with its mission, due process was not respected, or recognition is contrary to international public policy (article 1520).
Two absences from that list deserve notice. Failure to give reasons does not appear, so a complaint that is decisive in the OHADA area is inoperative in Paris. Setting aside in the State of origin does not appear either, and the French text does not make recognition conditional on res judicata in that State.
French procedure also follows a strict calendar. An appeal against the decision ruling on recognition or enforcement is brought within one month of service of that decision, the parties being able to agree another method of notification where the appeal targets the award bearing the enforcement order (article 1525). A debtor that lets that period pass loses every means of challenging the title, including those it could usefully have raised in the OHADA area. That interlocking of the French and African calendars is the point badly managed files most often miss, because it requires both proceedings to be steered together and not by two lawyers who ignore one another.
8. What the strategy must settle
Three decisions sum up the conduct of a post award file. The first is the choice of ground: attacking the award in the OHADA area, resisting its enforcement in France, or both, bearing in mind that the available complaints are not the same and that failure on one does not mechanically close the other.
The second is the calendar. On the creditor’s side, enforcement then immediate service, to close the article 27 period and to start interest running under the law of the forum once French enforcement has been obtained (Cass. 1re civ., 19 November 2015, no. 14-25.162). On the debtor’s side, a challenge built and filed early, on a procedural record still accessible.
The third was settled long before, when the clause was drafted, since it designated the seat, and therefore the court that hears the annulment, and the arbitration system, and therefore the nature of the challenge.
Frequently asked questions
Can an OHADA arbitral award be appealed
No. The award is subject to neither opposition, nor appeal, nor cassation, and only an application to set aside is available before the competent court of the member State (Uniform Act on Arbitration, article 25). Where the award was made under the auspices of the Common Court of Justice and Arbitration, the route is contestation of validity before the Court. In both cases the merits are not reheard, and only the exhaustively listed defects of regularity can succeed.
Is failure to give reasons really a ground of annulment
Yes, the Uniform Act makes it one of the six grounds (article 26), which clearly distinguishes OHADA law from the French regime of international arbitration, where that complaint is not among the five cases of article 1520 of the code of civil procedure. The argument nonetheless requires a genuine absence of reasons on a head of the operative part, and not reasoning the losing party finds too brief. Whoever drafts the award therefore has every interest in reasoning the ancillary heads too.
When does the period for applying to set aside start
The application is admissible as soon as the award is made and ceases to be admissible one month after service of the award bearing the enforcement order (article 27). So long as that service has not taken place, time does not run. The creditor therefore has every interest in obtaining enforcement and then serving without waiting, the court seised having to rule within a period not exceeding fifteen days (article 31). The debtor, for its part, gains nothing by delaying.
Can an award set aside in its State of origin be enforced in France
The French text does not exclude it. Recognition requires that the existence of the award be established and that it not be manifestly contrary to international public policy (article 1514), with no condition of res judicata in the State of origin, and annulment abroad is not among the five cases in which the Court of Appeal may refuse recognition (articles 1520 and 1525). The point is argued, but it is not decided in advance against the creditor.
Can the French judge rehear the merits
No. Review by the enforcement judge and by the Court of Appeal bears on regularity, not on merit. The Court of Appeal may refuse recognition only where the tribunal wrongly upheld or declined jurisdiction, where it was irregularly constituted, where it ruled without complying with its mission, where due process was not respected, or where recognition offends international public policy (article 1520). None of those cases permits a review of the facts.