UNCITRAL

The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) is the core legal body of the United Nations system in the field of international trade law. The UN General Assembly established it by resolution 2205 (XXI) of 17 December 1966. Its annual Commission sessions and its working group sessions alternate between New York and Vienna, and its secretariat is in Vienna. For electronic bills of lading, its main text is the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR), adopted by the Commission at its fiftieth session on 13 July 2017 and commended to States by General Assembly resolution 72/114 of 7 December 2017. A model law has no force of its own: UNCITRAL describes it as a suggested pattern for States to consider when legislating, and it takes effect only through national enactments. UNCITRAL publishes a status page listing such enactments. UNCITRAL also prepared the Rotterdam Rules, a convention on carriage of goods wholly or partly by sea adopted by the General Assembly on 11 December 2008, which includes rules on negotiable electronic transport records. On 17 October 2026 UNCITRAL's status page showed the Convention was not in force.