U.N. General Assembly adopts new cargo rules

U.N. General Assembly adopts new cargo rules The United Nations General Assembly Thursday adopted the U.N.   
Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea, and confirmed they will be referred to as the “Rotterdam Rules.”
      The assembly commended the U.N. Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) on successfully developing the rules and said a signing ceremony will be held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on Sept. 21-23.
      The new rules were developed during meetings that began in April
2002 and aim to create a modern and uniform law concerning the international carriage of goods which include an international sea leg, but which is not limited to port-to-port carriage of goods.
      The treaty will then go to individual nations and needs 20 countries to adopt it before it goes into effect. Proponents of the new treaty hope it will be widely embraced and replace a quiltwork of rules that different nations use today to regulate the carriage of goods at sea including: the Hague Rules of 1924, the Hague-Visby Rules of 1968, and the Hamburg Rules of 1978.