Report of the United Nations Commission on International
Trade Law on the work of its forty-seventh session
A/RES/69/115
documents should not adversely affect either the quality of the presentation or the
substance of the documents, to bear in mind the particular characteristics of the
mandate and functions of the Commission in the progressive development and
codification of international trade law when implementing page limits with respect
to the documentation of the Commission;13
16. Requests the Secretary-General to continue the publication of
Commission standards and the provision of summary records of the meetings of the
Commission, including committees of the whole established by the Commission for
the duration of its annual session, relating to the formulation of normative texts, and
takes note of the Commission’s decision to continue the trial use of digital
recordings, in parallel with summary records where applicable, with a view to
assessing the experience of using digital recordings and, on the basis of that
assessment, taking a decision at a future session regarding the possible replacement
of summary records by digital recordings;14
17. Recalls paragraph 48 of its resolution 66/246 of 24 December 2011
regarding the rotation scheme of meetings between Vienna and New York;
18. Notes with appreciation the work of the Secretariat on the system for the
collection and dissemination of case law on Commission texts in the six official
languages of the United Nations (the CLOUT system), notes the resource-intensive
nature of the system, acknowledges the need for further resources to sustain and
expand it, and in this regard welcomes efforts by the Secretariat towards building
partnerships with interested institutions, and appeals to Governments, the relevant
bodies of the United Nations system, organizations, institutions and individuals to
assist the secretariat of the Commission in raising awareness as to the availability
and usefulness of the CLOUT system in professional, academic and judiciary circles
and in securing the funding required for the coordination and expansion of the
system and the establishment, within the secretariat of the Commission, of a pillar
focused on the promotion of ways and means of interpreting Commission texts in a
uniform manner;
19. Stresses the importance of promoting the use of texts emanating from the
work of the Commission for the global unification and harmonization of
international trade law, and to this end urges States that have not yet done so to
consider signing, ratifying or acceding to conventions, enacting model laws and
encouraging the use of other relevant texts;
20. Welcomes the continued work of the Secretariat on digests of case law
related to Commission texts, including their wide dissemination, as well as the
continuing increase in the number of abstracts available through the CLOUT
system, in view of the role of the digests and the CLOUT system as important tools
for the promotion of the uniform interpretation of international trade law, in
particular by building local capacity of judges, arbitrators and other legal
practitioners to interpret those standards in the light of their international character
and the need to promote uniformity in their application and the observance of good
faith in international trade;
21. Recalls its resolutions affirming the importance of high-quality, userfriendly and cost-effective United Nations websites and the need for their
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13
Resolutions 59/39, para. 9, and 65/21, para. 18; see also Official Records of the General Assembly,
Fifty-ninth Session, Supplement No. 17 (A/59/17), paras. 124–128.
14
Official Records of the General Assembly, Sixty-ninth Session, Supplement No. 17 (A/69/17), para. 276.
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