The outcomes of the next stage of discussions on the draft provisions of the new Convention on Negotiable Cargo Documents

From 9 to 13 December 2024, the 45th session of Working Group VI (Negotiable Cargo Documents) of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL  The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) develops conventions, model laws, guidelines, and other instruments in the field of international trade. The main preparatory work is carried out within the framework of Working Groups. UNCITRAL Working Group VI is currently developing a new instrument on negotiable cargo documents. ) was held in Vienna. The International and Comparative Law Research Center represented by expert Igor Yastrzhembsky, participated in the discussion as an observer.

About the Convention

The draft provisions of the Convention on Negotiable Cargo Documents aim to create a new type of title document called "negotiable cargo document", which could perform a function similar to that of a sea bill of lading for the carriage of goods by any mode of transport in the context of multimodal or single-mode transportation. The Center participated in the review of early versions of the project and covered the progress of the project at the 41st, 42nd, 43rd, and 44th sessions of Working Group VI.

Participants and Agenda

The delegates from UNCITRAL member States, international organizations and leading experts in the field of transport law took part in the session. This was the fifth session at which delegates continued their work on the revised draft provisions of the new Convention on Negotiable Transport Documents. Particular attention was paid to the following topics:

• the principles of functional equivalence for electronic records
• standards of reliability and legal validity of negotiable cargo documents
• rights of holders and procedures for transferring rights
• regulation of potential legal conflicts with existing international transport conventions.

The Working Group confirmed its commitment to establish a regulatory framework that would meet the growing needs of international trade and contribute to the transparency and efficiency of global transport operations.

The Center's Proposals

The Center’s expert Igor Yastrzhembsky contributed to the discussion of key aspects of the development of the new document: a number of his suggestions were supported by the Working Group and will be included in the final text of the document. Among them:

• separate indication that only transport operator can qualify the description of the cargo in order to avoid contradictions in the text of the document and disputes about who has the right to do so (Art. 6 (3))
• exclusion of the possibility of issuing transportation order documents to bearer due to the unreliability of such an instrument and the high risk of improprieties (Art. 11)
• specifying the need to transfer control of an electronic record to the transport operator before replacing such a record with a paper document (Art. 16 (2)), as it is now established for the reverse replacement of a document with a record (Art. 16 (1))
• exclusion of the name of the recipient and its address from the mandatory details of the document as it may change (Art. 4 (1)).

At the invitation of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, Igor Yastrzhembsky also gave lectures for the Russian translation department of the UN Conference Management Service on the topics of Working Group VI, in particular, on how to provide the expert verification of the accuracy of translating UNCITRAL documents into Russian and achieve the correct use of Russian legal terminology.

Results of the session and plans for the future

Working Group VI has managed to reach consensus on a number of important issues. For example, it was agreed to maintain a universal (harmonized with other texts of UNCITRAL) approach to negotiable cargo documents and electronic records, which ensures technological neutrality and consistency with the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR). The key articles of the project were aligned with modern digital workflow standards.

The next session of the Working Group VI is scheduled for 17-21 March 2025.