Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
THE ARREST CONVENTION 1999
Nicholas Gaskell *
Richard Shaw †
A new International Convention on Arrest of Ships was adopted on 12 March 1999, after a two-week Diplomatic Conference convened at the Palais des Nations in Geneva by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The Arrest Convention 1999
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has refined and up-dated the principles of the Brussels Convention on the Arrest of Sea-Going Ships 1952, and will enter into force when 10 States ratify it. This article aims to highlight the important changes introduced by the Arrest Convention 1999, and the legal principles which are, and are not, affected by it.
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A. INTRODUCTION
1. Background
Reform of the Arrest Convention 1952 had been placed formally on the international agenda in 1984, when IMO and UNCTAD agreed that there needed to be consideration both of liens and arrest.3 But the initial impetus for reform came through the Comité Maritime International (CMI). The CMI, the federation of national maritime law associations, has been the promoter of many international Conventions in the field of maritime private law, including the 1952 Arrest Convention. At its 1985 Lisbon Conference a Draft Convention on Arrest of Ships was developed and adopted. This became known as the “Lisbon” Draft Arrest Convention. At the same conference a Draft Convention on Maritime Liens and Mortgages was also adopted. The two Draft Conventions were then submitted to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and
* Professor of Maritime and Commercial Law, Director of the Institute of Maritime Law, University of Southampton; Delegate for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) at the 1999 Geneva Diplomatic Conference.
† Solicitor. Consultant to Shaw and Croft, London; Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Maritime Law, University of Southampton. UK Delegate at the 1999 Geneva diplomatic conference and member of the conference Drafting Committee.
1. See the Appendix to this article for the text of the Convention: infra, 485.
2. The article is based on papers delivered at a one-day conference held by the Institute of Maritime Law of the University of Southampton in London on 20 May 1999. Expanded and revised versions of the conference papers, “The Law of Ships Arrest and the Arrest Convention 1999”, will be published separately in 1999 by the institute of Maritime Law. See also [1999] Int.M.L 67 and [1999] IJOSL 168 for earlier introductions by the writers.
3. See F. Berlingieri, “Arrest of Ships”, CMI Yearbook 1996, Antwerp I, 290 and generally, F. Berlingieri, Berlingieri on Arrest of Ships, 2nd edn (1996).
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