A new tool launched today tracks which countries are on the path to ratifying the United Nations Convention on Negotiable Cargo Documents – a landmark treaty that would allow cargo documents to go fully digital. Launched by the ICC Digital Standards Initiative (DSI), the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), the tracker maps each economy's progress across six stages, from awareness to ratification. With 28 economies already engaging and 10 signatures needed for the convention to enter into force, the race to paperless trade is becoming a lot more visible.
The tracker gives governments, businesses and international bodies their clearest view yet of how the world is moving – or not – towards a landmark treaty that could make paper cargo documents history.
The Negotiable Cargo Documents (NCD) Convention Trackernouvelle fenêtre maps how individual economies are progressing towards becoming parties to the United Nations Convention on Negotiable Cargo Documents – adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2025.
The convention addresses a persistent bottleneck in global trade – paper documents. Traditionally, paper documents need to be physically transferred between banks, traders and logistics providers. This is slow, expensive and prone to error and fraud. UNCITRAL’s NCD Convention creates a harmonised legal basis for cargo documents to be issued, transferred and enforced electronically across borders. (....)