Newsletter -February 2011

Seventeenth Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law

The Department of International Law participated in the development of a joint study with the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROT), with a view to unifying criteria for financial leasing and its relationship to mobile guarantees, including the related international instruments adopted by the OAS. The study was presented at the Eighteenth Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law, held at Washington, D. C, on July 25- 31, 2010, on which occasion Dr. Herbert Kronke, the former Secretary General of UNIDROIT, was appointed Rapporteur General for this subject matter area.

Aware of the need for such reforms, both the OAS and UNIDROIT have undertaken specific efforts to help the States reform their legal frameworks. With respect to the leasing of movable goods, UNIDROIT adopted the Convention on International Financial Leasing in Ottawa (1988) and the Model Law on Leasing (2008). With respect to the area of secured transactions involving movable goods, UNIDROIT adopted the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and its Protocol on specific issues related to aeronautical equipment (2001), and the Luxembourg Protocol on International Rail Equipment (2007). Likewise, the OAS adopted the Inter-American Model Law on Secured Transactions (2002), and its Model Registry Regulations (2009). The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) also adopted the Secure Transactions in 2008, and is currently considering other work in this area.

The main objective of the study, which is to be published in the Uniform Law Review in 2011, is to identify how UNIDROIT and the OAS member states can go about reforming their systems in such a way as to create a legal mechanism of modern financial leasing that would permit the development of such a mechanism in their economies.

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