ReSolution Issue 26, December 2020 | Page 4

UNCITRAL Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific issues its annual report

The UNCITRAL Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific (RCAP) presented a report on its activities in 2019-2020 to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNICTRAL). The report was presented to the Commission at its 53rd session held virtually in Vienna in July this year.

A main objective of RCAP is to raise awareness and promote effective understanding, adoption and use of UNCITRAL texts, in order to foster legal certainty in international commercial transactions. The report sets out the activities undertaken in the 2019-2020 year in reaching out and providing technical assistance on international trade and commercial law reforms within the Asia-Pacific region to States, international and regional organisations, and development banks. The topics included dispute settlement, e-commerce, security interests and sale of goods.

The report highlights RCAP’s active support of events and initiatives to raise awareness and promote effective understanding, adoption and use of a wide range of UNCITRAL texts, such as the Singapore Convention on Mediation, the UNCITRAL Model Laws on Electronic Transferable

ReSolution:In Brief

Records, Public Procurement, and Secured Transactions, and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

Highly successful flagship events were reported on, such as the Incheon Law & Business Forum, held in the Republic of Korea; the Asia Pacific ADR Conference held in Seoul; the UNCITRAL Asia Pacific Judicial Summit.

The full report is available here.

Australia ratifies the Mauritius Convention on Transparency

On 17 September 2020, Australia became the sixth state party to ratify the United Nations Convention on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration (Mauritius Convention), alongside Cameroon, Canada, Gambia, Mauritius, and Switzerland.

By becoming a party to the Mauritius Convention, Australia is consenting to apply the UNCITRAL rules on transparency in treaty-based investor-state arbitration (Rules on Transparency) to investor-state arbitration initiated in accordance with pre-existing investment treaties. The Mauritius Convention extends the application of the Rules on Transparency to investment treaties concluded prior to 1 April 2014, and therefore supplements pre-existing investment treaties with respect to transparency-related obligations.

The aim of the Rules on Transparency is to increase transparency and ensure public accessibility to investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) proceedings. The Mauritius Convention, through incorporation of the Rules on Transparency, now considers both the public interest in such arbitrations and the interest of the parties to resolve disputes in a fair and efficient manner. Going forward, this means investor-state arbitrations commenced under the ISDS provisions in Australia’s investment treaties and under the Rules on Transparency will have certain documents made public. These include the notice of arbitration and response (Article 3) and hearings for the presentation of evidence or oral argument

3 www.nzdrc.co.nz