Any Need for a New International Instrument on the Carriage of Goods by Sea: The Rotterdam Rules
![handle is hein.journals/jmlc42 and id is 447 raw text is: Journal of Maritime Law & Commerce, Vol. 42, No. 3, July, 2011
Any Need for a New International Instrument
on the Carriage of Goods by Sea: The
Rotterdam Rules?
Hakan Karan*
I
INTRODUCTION
This Paper studies a very popular subject: the Rotterdam Rules.
United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of
Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea,' in short the Rotterdam Rules'2 was adopt-
ed by the UN General Assembly on 11 December 20081 in New York, USA,
and opened for signature on 23 September 2009 in Rotterdam, Netherlands.'
The Rotterdam Rules are the result of an intensive work done for almost
twelve years firstly by International Maritime Committee (CMI) for four
years5 and then by the Working Group III on Transport Law of the UN
Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) for eight years.6 It
will enter into force following the ratification of twenty countries.
The Rotterdam Rules deal with the relations between the carrier interests
and cargo interests under the contract of international carriage of goods
*Attorney-at-Law; LLM, PhD in law, Associate Professor and Head of Maritime Law Department at
Ankara University Law Faculty; Delegate of ICC Transport Commission; Legal Consultant to the
Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Maritime Department).
'The final text of the Rotterdam Rules is annexed to General Assembly Resolution 63/122, U.N. Doc.
A/RES/63/122 /11 Dec. 2008) [hereinafter General Assembly Resolution 63/122] and to Report of the
United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, 41st Session, U.N. GAOR, 63d Sess., Supp. No.
17, Annex I, U.N. Doc. A/63/17 (2008) [hereinafter Commission Report].
'General Assembly Resolution 63/122, prgf. 3.
'General Assembly Resolution 63/122, prgf. 2.
'The following sixteen countries signed the Rotterdam Rules in the signing ceremony: Congo,
Denmark, France, Gabon, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Senegal,
Spain, Switzerland, Togo, and the USA. According to international law on international conventions,
such signatures are not, however, treated as ratifications binding the Countries, but only show their inter-
est in the Convention.
IM. F. Sturley, The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law's Transport Law
Project: An Interim View of a Work in Progress, 39 Tex. Int'l L. J. 65 (2003), p. 68.
'For the whole historical source of the UNCITRAL work, see www.uncitral.org.
'Article 94(1 ) of the Rotterdam Rules. At this time there are no ratifications.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jmlc42&div=26&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
Any Need for a New International Instrument on the Carriage of Goods by Sea: The Rotterdam Rules
Any Need for a New International Instrument on the Carriage of Goods by Sea: The Rotterdam Rules