United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Work on E-Com and Online Dispute Resolution

We have mentioned before the recent work of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law on online dispute resolution (ODR) and a colloquium held to review the potential future work of UNCITRAL on e-commerce issues.

ODR

The UNCITRAL Secretariat has produced a working paper for the meeting next month of the ODR Working Group. Working Paper 107 is a draft set of procedural rules that might apply to ODR processes. Along with it, you’ll find WP.106, the provisional agenda for that meeting.

Will this work? Is it likely to be useful? Or is it too high-level to provide real instruction for businesses or consumers looking to resolve their disputes online across national borders? Is there anything in the draft that would be particularly helpful or harmful to Canadians who want to engage in ODR?

Future work in e-commerce

The colloquium held in New York in February of this year looked at several topics that be dealt with productively at the international level: identity management, mobile e-commerce, transferable electronic records and ‘single window’ systems for border crossing or shipping documents. The Secretariat has now produced a report of the discussions at the colloquium, in two parts: Documents A/CN.9/716 and A/CN.9/716 Add. 1. They are available as documents in preparation for the 2011 annual meeting of the Commission.

Does this report cover the main issues relating to these topics? Does it suggest that one or more of the topics are more ripe for international guidance or lawmaking than the others? What should UNCITRAL’s priority be?

(The documents and slide presentations for the colloquium itself are collected here: http://www.uncitral.org/uncitral/en/commission/colloquia/electronic-commerce-2010.html.)