News
2001

New parties to international conventions

It was ICC, in the early decades of the twentieth century, that paved the way to the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards at New York in 1958. This Convention requires courts in contracting states to recognize arbitration agreements in writing and to refuse to allow a dispute to be litigated before them when it is subject to an arbitration agreement. It also requires courts to recognize and enforce foreign arbitral awards.

The list of contracting states has been growing regularly over the years and currently stands at 125, following its entry into force in Azerbaijan, Malta and St Vincent and the Grenadines in 2000, and in Honduras in 2001. (For full list of current members, see UNCITRAL)

In the financial field, the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of other States extended its reach in 2000 to include Kazakhstan, the Ukraine and Uruguay. This brings to 133 the number of countries in which the Convention is in force. Two further states - Bulgaria and the Dominican Republic - signed the Convention in 2000, but have not as yet deposited their instruments of ratification, which is a precondition for the Convention's entry into force.

The 1965 Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of other States, known as the Washington Convention, provides conciliation and arbitration rules for disputes between its member states and foreign investors from other member states. It also established the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) to oversee the application of the rules.

A third major instrument in international trade, widely referred to in arbitration cases, is the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) of 1980, known as the Vienna Sales Convention. *The list of states in which it is currently in force numbers 58, following its extension since 2000 to Kyrgystan, Mauritania, Peru, Uruguay and St Vincent and the Grenadines. The latter ratified the Convention with the reserve that it would not be bound by Article 1(1)(b). This implies that it accepts the application of the Convention to contracts of sales of goods between parties whose places of business are in different states when the states are contracting states, but not when the rules of private international law lead to the application of the law of a contracting state.

* Vol. 11/No. 2 (Fall 2000) of the ICC International Court of Arbitration Bulletin contains extracts from ICC arbitral awards relating to CISG and two articles by renowned specialists in the field.