Text and Status of the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards
The New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards is a multilateral treaty that generally requires courts to enforce most arbitration awards made in foreign countries.
Like any other treaty, the New York Convention only applies to those countries that have agreed to be bound by it, through ratification, accession, approval, or acceptance. When agreeing to be bound by a treaty, countries may submit reservations (indicating that they do not agree to be bound by a specific part of the treaty) or declarations (short statements explaining how they interpret specific articles of the treaty.)
Like virtually all treaties, the New York Convention designates the United Nations as its depository- the organization responsible for keeping the text of the treaty and tracking which countries have signed, ratified, and made reservations to the treaty.
The U.N. publishes the full text of the New York Convention as part of the United Nations Treaty Series (U.N.T.S.):
U.N.T.S. also publishes each country's notifications of signatures, ratifications and other consents to be bound, and reservations and declarations:
- New York Convention- Status and Reservations in U.N.T.S.Scroll down to view links to the official notice of each action taken for each country, as published in the U.N.T.S. volume for the date they were submitted.
For greater convenience, the U.N. also summarizes all of this information in Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General (MTDSG):
- New York Convention Status and Reservations in MTDSGCall Number: Main Stacks KZ171 .M86Table showing dates of all signatures, ratifications, and other consents to be bound, with links to the full text of all declarations and reservations.
Because the U.S. is a party to the Convention, the text of the Convention is also published in the U.S.'s official treaty publication, United States Treaties and Other International Agreements (U.S.T.):
- New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, 21.3 U.S.T. 2517Call Number: Main Stacks KZ235.3 .U55
Under Bluebook Rule 21.4.5(a)(ii), the preferred citation is to the U.S.T., with the U.N.T.S. as an optional parallel citation.
Decisions, Travaux Préparatoires, and Other Materials About the New York Convention
In determining how to interpret an article of the New York Convention, you may consider:
- Decisions of courts and arbitral tribunals applying the Convention
- Travaux préparatoires documenting how the Convention was drafted. Travaux préparatoires are roughly equivalent to legislative histories for statutes and are commonly used in interpreting treaties.
- Books and articles about the Convention
By far the best collection of materials on the New York Convention is:
- 1958 New York Convention GuideComprehensive website on the New York Convention, developed by Shearman & Sterling LLP and Columbia Law School in cooperation with UNCITRAL. Includes an over 350 page article-by-article guide to the Model Law, a bibliography of hundreds of additional publications, extensive travaux préparatoires, and over a thousand cases from across the world.
UNCITRAL also provides other, more basic access points to materials on the New York Convention:
- UNCITRAL Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral AwardsText, status, travaux préparatoires, and guides for the New York Convention.
- UNCITRAL CLOUT Database- Filtered to New York Convention DecisionsBrowse or search abstracts (summaries) of arbitral decisions and cases interpreting UNCITRAL sponsored texts. For each decision, UNCITRAL links to the report including the abstract of the decision and to any available full-text versions of the decision. The link above filters to only those cases interpreting the New York Convention. Use the side bar to filter results further by article, country, or date. Use the search bar to search by CLOUT number or to search abstracts by keyword.
Additional Arbitration Treaties
For a compilation of additional arbitration treaties, see:
- International Arbitration Treaties byCall Number: Main stacks K2400.A35 S63 2010Publication Date: Regularly updated