Working Documents

General Assembly

The General Assembly is the main deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations. It adopts one or more resolutions regarding UNCITRAL's annual work. These resolutions are first issued in a provisional form and then reissued at the end of the year as the last numbered supplement of the official records of the General Assembly. So, for example, A/RES/54/103 is the document containing a provisional form of Assembly resolution 54/103 adopted during the fifty-fourth session of the General Assembly. Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly prior to 1976 followed a different format and were sequentially numbered, the session at which they were adopted being indicated by Roman numerals (e.g. 2205 (XXI)).

The General Assembly's Sixth Committee is one of the main committees of the General Assembly and considers legal matters, including the annual report of UNCITRAL.

Commission

UNCITRAL carries out its work at annual sessions held alternately in New York and Vienna. The work at these sessions typically includes:

  1. finalization and adoption of draft texts referred to the Commission by the working groups
  2. consideration of progress reports of the working groups on their respective projects
  3. selection of topics for future work or further research
  4. reporting on technical cooperation and assistance activities and coordination of work with other international organizations
  5. monitoring of developments in the CLOUT system and the status and promotion of UNCITRAL legal texts
  6. consideration of General Assembly resolutions on the work of UNCITRAL
  7. administrative matters

Working Groups

Working Groups undertake the substantive preparatory work on topics on UNCITRAL's work programme. Membership of working groups currently includes all States members of UNCITRAL. A Working Group typically meets twice a year, holding a spring session in New York and a fall session in Vienna.