On 27 June 2016, the Legal Counsel, Mr. Serpa Soares, opened the forty-ninth session of UNCITRAL. In his opening address, he drew attention to the relevance of UNCITRAL’s work to the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 16, “promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development and providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” At the current session, the Commission will finalize draft texts on security interests, arbitration and online dispute resolution. The Commission will also review progress made by its Working Groups and discuss and plan its current and future work. It will also consider coordination with other international organizations and technical assistance activities.

In his comments, Mr. Serpa Soares expressed gratitude to the European Union and OPEC Fund for International Development for their contributions to the Transparency Registry, the repository for the publication of information and documents in treaty-based investor-state arbitration housed and managed at the UNCITRAL Secretariat. He also extended thanks to the Republic of Korea for its continued support of the UNCITRAL Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific and to the People’s Republic of China for approving the contribution of a legal expert to the Regional Centre by the authorities of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China.

For more information about UNCITRAL, see http://www.uncitral.org

For the official press release about the forty-ninth session, see http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/pressrels/2016/unisl232.html