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UNCLP

UNCLP  
UN Limitation Convention (1974)

  1. The Convention on the Limitation Period in the International Sale of Goods (New York, 1974) provides uniform international legal rules governing the period of time within which a party under a contract for the international sale of goods must commence legal proceedings against the other party to assert a claim arising from the contract or relating to its breach, termination or invalidity. This period is referred to in the Convention as the “limitation period”. The basic aims of the limitation period are to prevent the institution of legal proceedings at such a late date that the evidence relating to the claim is likely to be unreliable or lost and to protect against the uncertainty and injustice that would result if a party were to remain exposed to unasserted claims for an extensive period of time.
  2. The Limitation Convention grew out of the work of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) towards the harmonization and unification of international sales law, which also resulted in the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (Vienna, 1980) (hereinafter referred to as the “United Nations Sales Convention”). During that work it was observed that, while most legal systems limited or prescribed a claim from being asserted after the lapse of a specified period of time, numerous disparities existed among legal systems with respect to the conceptual basis for doing so. As a result there were disparities in the length of the period and in the rules governing the limitation or prescription of claims after that period. Those disparities created difficulties in the enforcement of claims arising from international sales transactions, and thus burdened international trade.
  3. In view of those problems UNCITRAL decided to prepare uniform international legal rules on the limitation period in the international sale of goods. On the basis of a draft Convention prepared by UNCITRAL, a diplomatic conference convened in New York by the General Assembly adopted the Limitation Convention on 14 June 1974.
  4. The Limitation Convention was amended by a Protocol adopted in 1980 by the diplomatic conference that adopted the United Nations Sales Convention, in order to harmonize the Limitation Convention with the latter Convention, in particular, with regard to scope of application and admissible declarations. As a result, the scope of application of the amended Limitation Convention and that of the United Nations Sales Convention are identical.
  5. The Limitation Convention entered into force on 1 August 1988. As of 1 October 2011, 29 States are parties to the unamended Convention and 21 of those 29 States are parties to the amended Convention. The current updated status of the Convention is available on the UNCITRAL website.1 Authoritative information on the status of the Convention, as well as on related declarations, including with respect to territorial application and succession of States, may be found on the United Nations Treaty Collection on the Internet.2

1 Available at: www.uncitral.org/uncitral/en/uncitral_texts/sale_goods/1974Convention_status.html.
2 Available at: http://treaties.un.org/.
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