This is the work of The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) over the last few years.
It was adopted by the UN General Assembly in October 2025.
It will open for signature in Ghana later this year and will be known as the Accra Convention on Negotiable Cargo Documents.
Purpose
So what is it all about?
To date, only sea carriage has benefitted from a negotiable document of title – the bill of lading.
Other sectors – carriage of goods by road, rail and air traditionally used non-negotiable documents (think air waybills, CMR consignment notes).
UNCITRAL thought that this has restricted the global growth of multimodal transport - access to trade finance was hindered creating cashflow problems for businesses and limited opportunities in landlocked regions for cross border trade.
The aim is to close the gap that exists between maritime and other modes of carriage.
The Convention seeks to establish a uniform legal framework for the issuance, transfer and legal effects of negotiable cargo documents (NCDs) which will function as a negotiable document of title across all modes of transport in a multimodal or unimodal context.
How does it do this?
I should say that the draft Convention has the merit of concise brevity.
It is concise both in length (only 27 articles) and in how it seeks to achieve its purpose – essentially leaving the underlying international carriage regimes (eg Hague Visby Rules, CMR, Montreal Convention) untouched and adopting a tech-lite approach – although the NCDs can be hard copy or in digital form, so far as digital is concerned there is no great detail as to how they should operate.
This approach is in direct contrast to the earlier attempt at an international multimodal carriage convention, the Rotterdam Rules (2008) which was ghastly – overly complex and clumsily drafted. Fortunately, that Convention lies in the repository unadopted.
From a legal perspective, what is not to like about this?
For more information on the Convention, contact our marine law solicitors.