The Department of International Law of the Secretariat for Legal Affairs of the OAS is pleased to reintroduce our newsletter as a means to disseminate information about recent activities, important juridical developments within the Organization, references to our publications, courses and workshops and other information of general interest to the international juridical community.
![Newslettes](http://www.oas.org/es/sla/ddi/imgs/boletines_informativos_Feb-2017.jpg)
The Department of International Law has among its principal functions to promote the codification of international law, both public and private, as well as the teaching and dissemination of inter-American law within the framework of the Inter-American Program for the Development of International Law, which was approved by the OAS General Assembly in 1997 and updated in 2011. Topics currently under study by the Department include the following: access to public information; personal data protection; public defense and access to justice; access to credit (e.g., by means of secured transactions reforms, electronic warehouse receipts for agricultural products); simplification of business registration (through simplified incorporation); resolution of disputes through commercial arbitration and alternative means of online dispute resolution, in particular in consumer transactions; and corporate social responsibility. These are among the many issues that fall under the responsibility of the Department through mandates either from the General Assembly or from the Inter-American Juridical Committee.
As the Technical Secretariat of this Committee, we would like to begin this series of newsletters by announcing the launch of an updated and “user-friendly” website on the activities of the Inter-American Juridical Committee, which we invite you to consult at the following link:
http://www.oas.org/en/sla/iajc. On this page you will find links to the electronic version of the Annual Reports of the Committee, information about its forthcoming regular session in March 2017, as well as highlights of matters on which the Committee has recently reported or proposed legislative guidelines or guiding principles, such as those relating to public defense in the Americas, international protection of consumers, and access to credit through the adoption of principles for electronic warehouse receipts for agricultural products.
We invite you to consult this page periodically and to watch for our newsletters, which we hope will meet your expectations and will help you to follow the latest legal developments at the Organization of American States.
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For further information about the Newsletters of the Committee, click here