On 20 and 21 February 2025, UNIDROIT participated in a…
Several instruments adopted by UNIDROIT over the last few decades dealing with International Commercial Contracts and access to credit (in particular Leasing and Factoring) are relevant in the areas of agricultural production, trade and investment. In 2010, acknowledging the importance of this particular sector, the UNIDROIT General Assembly decided to include aspects of the private law of agricultural development in the Work Programme of the Institute. Since then, UNIDROIT has developed a line of work specifically devoted to the crucial role private law can play in agricultural development, and it established partnerships with other intergovernmental organisations to leverage synergies and develop joint projects.
In particular, UNIDROIT has engaged in the preparation of legal guides to promote an enabling legal environment and best practices in contract farming relationships and in agricultural land investment contracts, as well as has developed the Mining, Agricultural and Construction MAC Protocol to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment to facilitate the acquisition of high-value agricultural equipment.
Most recently, in collaboration with UNCITRAL, UNIDROIT has commenced work to develop a Model Law on Warehouse Receipts to facilitate access to credit, especially for smallholders and small and medium-sized enterprises in the agricultural sector. In addition, together with FAO and IFAD, UNIDROIT established a Working Group for the preparation of a new legal guide on Collaborative Legal Structures for Agricultural Enterprises which aims at addressing the challenges and opportunities of different legal forms, such as multiparty contracts, corporations and cooperatives and how they can be used to support the development of sustainable agri-food supply chains.
The UNIDROIT/FAO/IFAD Legal Guide on Contract Farming intends to promote good practices between farmers and buyers of agricultural commodities by enhancing knowledge and awareness of the legal regime applicable to contract farming operations.
The practice of producing under a contract is used for a broad array of agricultural commodities in many countries of the world and is growing significantly in developing countries. Contract farming does not disrupt farmers’ rights over the land and under enabling conditions may deliver substantial economic and social benefits to the parties and the community.
One key element of the success of contract farming arrangements is the capacity of the parties to build stable, commercially sound and fair relationships, based on clear commitments and mutual compliance and supported by an enabling legal framework.
The Guide has proven to be a useful tool and reference point for a broad range of users involved in contract farming practice, policy design, legal reform and capacity-building. It can help creating a favourable, equitable and sustainable environment for contract farming.
Useful link: FAO’s Contract Farming Resource Centre
Continuing its collaboration with Rome-based international organisation in the field of agricultural development, UNIDROIT and IFAD recently launched, in September 2021, an international instrument on Agricultural Land Investment Contracts (ALIC Legal Guide) for use by legal counsel working on the leasing of agricultural land, whether from a State, local community or private party perspective. The instrument – developed by a Working Group of renowned experts, representatives of international Organisations and stakeholders builds upon the UNIDROIT-FAO-IFAD Legal Guide on Contract Farming and the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. The ALIC Legal Guide does not to endorse large-scale land acquisitions and has been developed to raise awareness about alternative investment models. In acknowledging that land acquisitions continue to occur, however, the instrument aims at ensuring that leases of agricultural land are done responsibly and that stakeholders’ rights, including those of legitimate tenure right holders are protected and respected in a way that is fully consistent with principles and internationally accepted standards for the promotion of secure tenure rights, equitable access to land and responsible agricultural investment, as reflected in the VGGT, the CFS-RAI Principles and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Information regarding the background on the ALIC Legal Guide, including Working Group meeting summaries and documentation is provided here.
The Legal Guide on Collaborative Legal Structures for Agricultural Enterprises (LSAE) is the most recent project of the tripartite partnership between the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
As a natural follow-up from the Legal Guide on Contract Farming (finalised in 2015) and the Legal Guide on Agricultural Land Investment Contracts (finalised in 2020), the LSAE project was selected by the UNIDROIT Governing Council, at its 98th session (Rome, 8-10 May 2019) and approved by the General Assembly at its 78th session (Rome, 12 December 2019) to be developed during the 2020-2022 Work Programme. The high priority level of the LSAE project was maintained in the 2023-2025 Work Programme, until its final completion.
More information on the background, scope and composition of the Working Group of the UNIDROIT/FAO/IFAD LSAE project is provided here.
The Cape Town Convention together with its various Protocols is designed to bring significant economic benefits to countries at all stages of economic development. In developing countries, the Cape Town Convention lowers the cost of finance for mobile equipment that has previously been unavailable or available only at a relatively high cost.
In the agriculture sphere, the Mining, Agriculture and Construction (MAC) Protocol to the Cape Town Convention facilitates the financing and acquisition of high value agricultural equipment. The MAC Protocol establishes an international legal regime for the creation, enforcement, registration and priority of security interests in such categories of equipment.
In the area of agriculture, the Protocol will allow agriculture and farming enterprises to acquire equipment (for example, tractors, harvesters, seeders, sprayers etc) they would otherwise be unable to acquire and thus permit them to optimise their activity. It will also allow producers of equipment to export to markets that without the MAC Protocol would remain closed to them.
The MAC Protocol is predicted to have an annual global economic impact of $23 billion USD in developing countries and $7 billion USD in developed countries. A 2018 independent economic assessment of the MAC Protocol is available here.
For more information on the Cape Town Convention and MAC Protocol, access the Secured Transactions Portal
Introduction Diplomatic Conference Background Study Group Negotiations Committee of Governmental Experts
In 2020, UNIDROIT in partnership with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) started a joint project to develop a Model Law on Warehouse Receipts. Warehouse receipts are understood as documents – in paper or electronic form – issued by warehouse operators that state the ownership of a commodity and may be traded or used as collateral to obtain credit. This instrument drastically enhances the possibility, especially of small businesses in the agricultural sector. A supportive legal framework is widely regarded as a prerequisite for a well-functioning warehouse receipt system.
Accordingly, the UNIDROIT/UNCITRAL Model Law will consist of a set of black letter rules and is conceived as a standalone instrument for adoption by States seeking to reform their national legislation. Importantly, the Model Law will contemplate the issuance and transfer of electronic warehouse receipts, including through the use of electronic platforms and distributed ledger technology systems, and thereby allow stakeholders to seize the opportunities offered by new technologies.
The Model Law is being prepared by a group of leading experts in the field, representing different legal systems and geographical regions. The relevant intergovernmental organisations active in the field – among others, the World Bank Group and FAO –, as well as public and private sector stakeholders representing are actively participating in the project.
Further information on this project and its current status can be found at the dedicated project page here.
Introduction – Background of the project – Working Group sessions and current status
On 20 and 21 February 2025, UNIDROIT participated in a…
Between 19 – 20 November 2024, the Joint Network for…
From 20 to 22 November 2024, the sixth session of…
Professor Iacopo Donati is the UNIDROIT/Bank of Italy Chair Holder and is mainly responsible for assisting in the Bank Insolvency project. He is Professor of Corporate and Insolvency Law at the University of Siena, and coordinates the research project ‘Pro.Re.Ba.’ (Proportionating rules on bank crisis prevention and management to the case of retail banks), which has received funding from the Italian Ministry of University. He has previously taught corporate law at the University of Venice ‘Ca’ Foscari’, at the University of Florence and at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’.
Professor Donati is the author of several publications on corporate law, restructuring, insolvency law, and bank crisis management. On the same topics, he has been invited as a speaker to various international and national conferences and participated in some high-impact international, European, and national research projects. Professor Donati’s education includes a Ph.D. in Corporate Law (University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’), an LLM in Corporate Governance (Stanford Law School), and a Law Degree with honors (University of Florence). He is qualified as an attorney in Italy and in the State of New York (USA).
Ms Olga Fonotova is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of Law (Department of Legal Regulation of Business) at the Russian National Research University “Higher School of Economics” in Moscow. She holds a PhD degree cum laude in private law / private international law from the Lomonosov Moscow State University (2006). Her academic and teaching interests cover private international law, international and national commercial law, with a focus on unified and non-state legal regulation of cross-border commerce.
Olga is a Russian law qualified practicing lawyer in the sphere of national and international commercial and corporate law with 20+ years’ experience in leading law firms. As part of her legal practice, she has advised multinational corporations on the setting up of multi-jurisdictional commercial relations, on the formation / termination of international joint ventures, restructuring of assets, and financing / refinancing of projects. For her work on commercial and corporate legal matters she was included in the international rating of leading lawyers “The Best Lawyers® in Russia” (2018 – 2022).
She is a UNIDROIT alumna (2011) and a Correspondent of UNIDROIT in Russia (2023 – 2025). From 2016 to 2021 Olga was a member of the ICC Commission on Commercial Law and Practice (ICC CLP) and a member of the Association of European Business (AEB) in Moscow.
Allan M. Mukuki, PhD Candidate (Navarra, Spain), LLM (Groningen, Netherlands), PGDip (KSL), LLB (Hons) (UoN), ACIArb (London), Advocate of the High Court of Kenya.
Allan Mukuki is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya as well as a Commissioner for Oaths. He is presently a PhD Candidate at the University of Navarra in Spain. He is also a holder of an LL.M in International Law and the Law of International Organizations, from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He has an LL. B (Hons) from the University of Nairobi, he is a Member of the Cha
rtered Institute of Arbitrators (London). He further holds a post-graduate diploma in law from the Kenya School of Law. Allan is also a scholar from the Hague Academy of International Law.
Some of his many roles in the legal profession include Director of International Partnerships; a Doctoral Fellow; member of the Management Committee and moot court coordinator, all for Strathmore Law School; Research Fellow for the African Region (Kenya), for the European Research Council Grant Project on the interpretation of customary international law; and Acting Director for the Strathmore Institute of Advanced Studies in International Criminal Justice (SIASIC)
Allan has previously worked at A.F Gross Advocate; in various legal institutes; in governmental agencies and in the Judiciary of Kenya. He was also a Legal researcher in the Office of the Solicitor General, Kenya, for the Maritime Delimitation in the Indian Ocean (Somalia v. Kenya), a case that was before the International Court of Justice. His main areas of specialization include Public International Law, The Law of International Organizations, International Humanitarian Law, International and Regional (EAC) Refugee Law and Legal Policy Development.
Further, Allan has been involved in various national and international legal consultancies and projects; he has published several peer reviewed legal articles, a legal monograph and presented several legal papers in international conferences around the world. He has also developed several policy documents for Strathmore University as well as (currently operational) manuals and laws for the operation of the Judiciary as well as governmental agencies and regional agencies such as IGAD.
ANDREA SANTACOLOMA
Director
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Andrea Santacoloma is a Panamanian lawyer that focuses her practice on international commercial arbitration.
Prior to joining Adell & Merizalde, Andrea was the Deputy Director for Latin America of the ICC International Court of Arbitration for 5 years. In this role, she gained vast experience in the internal functioning of the ICC’s Secretariat and Court and saw first-hand the work of hundreds of arbitrators and ICC Court Members in the region. Andrea was also in charge of identifying new opportunities and potential users of the ICC Dispute Resolution Services (ICC DRS) in Latin America, in liaison with the ICC National Committees and other institutions in the region. She also worked as a lawyer advising local and international clients on business and corporate law and M&A in 3 Panamanian law firms.
She is currently the Executive Director of the Latin American Arbitration Association (ALARB), one of Latin America’s leading associations gathering practitioners and arbitrators, which seeks to encourage the use of arbitration and foster initiatives for the development of international arbitration in the region.
In July 2022, the G
overning Council of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) appointed Andrea as a Correspondent for Latin America. Namely, Andrea was appointed as a Correspondent for the Republic of Panama for the period 2022-2025.
EDUCATION
• American University Washington College of Law, LL.M. in International Arbitration and Business Law
• International Training Centre of the International Labor Organization (ILO) jointly with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), Università degli Studi di Torino, and University Institute of European Studies (IUSE), LL.M. in International Trade Law & Dispute Resolution
• Universidad Católica Santa María La Antigua, LL.M. in Corporate Law
• Universidad Católica Santa María La Antigua, Degree in Law and Political Science
• Centro de Estudios Regionales de Panamá, Diploma in Entrepreneurship and Management of Small and Medium Enterprises
Bar admissions
Republic of Panama
Languages
Spanish, English, Italian (intermediate)
asantacoloma@adellmerizalde.com
+507 370 4155
NAME: PROF. DR. HERNANY VEYTIA (LL.M. YALE)
AFFILIATION DIRECTOR BNM-CAMBRIDGE STUDY CENTRE ON SUSTAINABLE INVESTMENTS
PRESENTATION
Professor of law, international strategic consultant, arbitrator, and entrepreneur. Hernany Veytia is very comfortable with complex, high-profile and confidential transactions. Her consulting experience as partner of BNM and Deloitte enables her to focus on and add value to the sustainable and commercial aspects of each deal. Frequently she leads transdisciplinary teams to deliver fact findings and legal opinions, feasibility studies and turn-key projects for banks, governments, international organisations, and corporations willing to expand or withdraw operations in other jurisdictions.
In Prof Veytia’s experience UNIDROIT works have been very useful to understand not only the foreign law, but also to recognise the cultural, political, and economic factors at play, and the way national and international regulators operate-and cooperate. In her opinion, UNIDROIT instruments have been of utmost importance for the legal strategies she designed for:
• DANPREIT (Dispute Analytics Platform for Real Estate Investment Trusts in the Agriculture, Construction and Mining industries).
• TELEKAIROS, innovative methodology that incorporates the use of space assets.
• Corporate art collections, restitutions, including donations, sponsorships, and loans to museums.
• Contracts used by a German waterworks company willing to grow in all the Caribbean and Central American countries.
• Liquidation of commercial and investment banks
• IPOs and reverse mergers for companies in the extraction industries (Canadian stock exchange), ILS listed in Bermuda and African sovereign funds listed in London.
• Franchising and other commercial contracts in the food & drinks, health, aero-space, and automotive industries.
In the last three decades Prof. Veytia has lived, and successfully completed investments and disinvestments in more than forty countries in the five Continents. She is frequently appointed as arbitrator and invited as speaker on risk transfers at international industry conferences in fields of her expertise: energy (both renewable and traditional), artificial intelligence, infrastructure, mining, real estate, agriculture, rail, space, automotive, and franchising. She sits in the board of directors of companies in Europe including the United Kingdom.
Anna Veneziano is the Deputy Secretary General of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT). She is a Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Teramo, Italy, where she was formerly the Director of the Department of Private Law. She has also formerly been a tenured Professor of European Property Law at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Her education includes a Law Degree with honours from the University of Rome La Sapienza, an LL.M degree from the Yale Law School funded by a Fulbright scholarship, and a PhD degree from the University of Florence (Italy).
Her main research and publication areas are on secured transactions as well as international, comparative, and European contract and sales law. Before joining UNIDROIT she was a member of the Italian delegation with respect to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests on Mobile Equipment and its Aircraft Protocol as well as its Space Protocol. She was also a member of the Study Group on a European Civil Code and of the Compilation and Redaction Group on a Draft Common Frame of Reference on European Private Law (DCFR), and of the restricted Expert Group set up by the European Commission on a common European law on sales.
P
rofessor Ignacio Tirado was appointed Secretary-General by the Governing Council at its 97th session, and officially took office on 27 August 2018. A national of Spain, Professor Tirado (Commercial, Corporate and Insolvency Law, Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, Spain) holds a PhD from the Universities of Bologna and Autónoma de Madrid and an LLM from the University of London. Professor Tirado has been a Senior Legal Consultant at the World Bank’s Legal Vice-Presidency and Financial Sector Practice for more than nine years, having also consulted for the IMF on insolvency related matters as well as for the Asian Development Bank on commercial legal reform.
Amongst other accolades to his professional experience, Professor Tirado is a founding member of the European Banking Institute, an International Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and has been Director and Academic Co-Chair of the International Insolvency Institute.
A Swedish national, Ms Lena Peters grew up in Italy where she attended an English school. In 1978 she took her Juris Kandidatexamen at Stockholm University followed by a Master of Laws from King’s College, London (1979). Since 1985 she has been with UNIDROIT, first as Research Officer, lastly as Principal Legal Officer, her main duties being Secretary to the Working Group for the Preparation of Principles of International Commercial Contracts, Secretary to the Study Group on Franchising, Secretary to the Committee of Governmental Experts on Franchising.She also collaborated on the project for the preparation of the ELI-Unidroit Model European Rules of Civil Procedure. She is currently Managing Editor of the Uniform Law Review and responsible for publications at UNIDROIT.
Marina Schneider is Principal Legal Officer and Treaty Depositary at UNIDROIT. She studied law at the University of Strasbourg (France) and Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne. She joined the UNIDROIT in 1987 and was involved in the elaboration and French versions of most UNIDROIT instruments since. She is in charge of the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects and of the UNESCO-UNIDROIT Model Provisions on State Ownership of Undiscovered Cultural Objects. She is the author of the Explanatory Report of the 1995 Convention and many articles on the Convention and other international instruments in the field. Ms Schneider is also responsible for the project on private collections and for the UNIDROIT Convention Academic Project (UCAP). She is member of the Board of the International Society for Research on Art and Cultural Heritage Law (ISCHAL).
Professor of Commercial Law, Carlos III University of Madrid. Currently, Sir Roy Goode Scholar at UNIDROIT, Rome, 2021-2022. Chair of Excellence 2017-2018 at University of Oxford (Uc3m- Santander Program), affiliated to Harris Manchester College. Previously Distinguished Visiting Professor and fellow of a number of Academic Institutions. Arbitrator of Madrid Court of Arbitration. Member of ELI (European Law Institute) Council and Executive Committee. Member of the Expert Group of the European Commission on Liability and New Technologies and member of the Expert Group of the European Observatory of Platform Economy; the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law; the expert group of the Inclusive Global Legal Innovation Platform for Online Dispute Resolution – UNCITRAL and Hong Kong Department of Justice. Expert of the UNIDROIT Study Group on the MAC Protocol of the Cape Town Convention on International Interests. Delegate of Spain to UNIDROIT for the adoption of the Protocol, delegate of Spain in Working Group VI of UNCITRAL on secured transactions and in Working Group IV on Electronic Commerce. Member of UNIDROIT Working Groups on Enforcement and Warehouse Receipts.
William Brydie-Watson is an Australian lawyer who specialises in secured transactions law and private international law. Before joining UNIDROIT, William was a government lawyer in the Private International Law and International Arbitration section of the Australian Attorney-General’s Department, where he worked primarily on treaty negotiation and the implementation of private international law treaties in Australia. At UNIDROIT, he is primarily responsible for the implementation of the Mining, Agriculture and Construction (MAC Protocol) to the 2001 Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and the development of a Model Law on Factoring. William also serves as UNIDROIT’s liaison with the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and as manager of the Institute’s Scholarship and Internship Programme. Admitted to practice in New South Wales and the High Court of Australia, he has a Bachelor of Arts (honours), a Bachelor of Laws and a Master of Laws from the Australian National University. William also lectures on International Secured Transactions Law at the Eotvos Lorand Faculty of Law in Budapest.
