The Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA) or International Association of Lawyers is an international non-governmental organisation, created in 1927, that brings together more than two million legal professionals from all over the world.
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Historical context
At the end of the 19th century, most European lawyers worked within autonomous and independent bar associations, each with their own customs.
However, after World War I"," Archived 2019-04-17 at the Wayback Machine European lawyers gradually realized the importance of helping certain bar associations modernise and build international contacts
In July 1925, lawyers from Belgium, France and Luxembourg initiated the "Union Internationale des Avocats" project, which came to fruition after two years of collaboration on July 8, 1927, in Charleroi, Belgium
The President of the Paris Bar Association, Georges Guillaumin, was nominated as the Association’s first president.
Once the UIA was formed, several bar associations sought its membership. After joining the Association, each new bar contributed unique efforts towards the UIA's dual objectives: adapting older bars to the new economic and international climate, and working with the League of Nations for the establishment of lasting peace.
Objectives
Today, the UIA defends the legal profession and encourages international networking, cooperation and understanding among lawyers with due regard to their cultural and professional diversity
Two objectives underlie the UIA's activities:
Promote the essential principles of the legal profession and of the development of the legal field in all legal areas of specialisation at the international level.
Contribute to the professional enrichment of its members via informational exchanges enabled by UIA commissions and working groups.
Missions
Today, the UIA is an association open to all lawyers from around the world, general or specialized, and brings together several thousand members and 200 bar associations, federations, and associations from 110 countries.
Multilingual and multicultural, the UIA is the only major international lawyers organisation to have eight official languages (French, English, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Arabic, and Chinese) and to work in three working languages: French, English, and Spanish.
Moreover, the UIA has built more than 43 commissions composed of lawyers from jurisdictions spanning the globe. These lawyers practice in law firms, businesses, or public institutions. Each commission monitors the evolution occurring in a particular legal field (or practice) and determines how these changes will affect or be affected by other legal fields. All UIA commissions collaborate to keep each other informed of their respective developments and findings.
The UIA's commissions and working groups are divided into two principal fields: Business Law and General Practice and Human Rights
Business law
The UIA commissions and working groups in business law focus on competition law, contracts, bankruptcy, corporate law, labour, intellectual property law, tax, banking, mergers and acquisitions, mediation, the international sale of goods, and foreign investments, among many other practice areas.
The UIA collaborates with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and notably presented a proposition for the definition of a "center of principal interests" (articles 2b) and 16-3 of the UNCITRAL law on international insolvency.
Every year, the UIA organises numerous seminars on international subjects. The UIA's events allow participants to meet colleagues, establish professional contacts and to debate questions about current events and controversial legal topics.
For its annual congress, the UIA creates working sessions for its commissions. These commissions produce reports accessible to all UIA members and organise congressional joint-sessions.
Each year, one or more principal themes are established for the Congress, inciting national and international legal and economic experts to engage in fruitful debate.
Protection of lawyers and human rights
The UIA intervenes throughout the world in favour of lawyers who are imprisoned or persecuted for practising their profession.
Since 1971, the UIA has benefited from its special consultative status in the United Nations and the European Council. Through the European Council, the UIA produced a policy recommendation concerning money laundering and the war on terror.
The UIA is represented in the three main offices of the United Nations (New York, Geneva, and Vienna), where the UIA organises a summit for international bar association presidents. These summits permit bar association presidents to further the work initiated by the UN in diverse domains of international law.
Additionally, the UIA sits at the heart of the Consultative Councils of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Finally, the UIA has followed the work of the preparatory commission of the International Criminal Court at the time of its creation in 1998. The UIA also attends sessions of the Assembly of States Parties to the Statute of the Court. The UIA is a member of the executive council of the International Criminal Bar.
Members
Individuals: Practising lawyers (general practitioners and specialists)
Collective: bar associations
Associated individuals: Law professors, judges and other legal professionals
Presidency
The term of each UIA presidency is one year.
Past Presidents:
1930-1931: Paul Crokaert, Belgium
1932-1933: Jhr J.W.M. De Brauw, Netherlands
1936-1937: Aloïs Stompfe, Czechoslovakia
1960-1962: Adelino da Palma Carlos, Portugal
1964-1965: Jhr. Jacob H. De Brauw, Netherlands
1969-1971: Claude Lussan, France
1971-1973: José Luis del Valle Iturriaga, Spain
1979-1981: Harold H. Healy, Jr., United States
1981-1983: Ernest Arendt, Luxembourg
1987-1988: Anders R. Öhman, Sweden
1994-1995: Garry Downes Q.C., Australia
1995-1996: Albert-Louis Dupont-Willemin, Marqués de Mulhacén, Switzerland.
1996-1997: Kottayan Katankot Venugopal, India
2000-2001 : Miguel I. Estrada Samano, Mexico
2005-2006: Delos N. Lutton,
2006-2007: Paulo Lins e Silva, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
2007-2008: Héctor Díaz-Bastien, Spain
2013-2014: Stephen L. Dreyfuss, recipient of the Legion of Honour, received on May 30, 2014, United States
Annual congress
Since its creation, the UIA has organised annual congresses in locations all over the world for members and non-members to discuss legal topics in an international forum.
According to UIA Statutes, the organisation must convene a Congress at least once every two years. Between 1929 and 1938, UIA congresses were mainly annual. The 1939 Congress, which was scheduled to take place in Warsaw on the eve of the Second World War, did eventually not take place:
1929 - I Congress: Brussels, Belgium
1930 - II Congress: Paris, France
1931 - III Congress: Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg
1932 - IV Congress: The Hague, Netherlands
1933 - V Congress: Dubrovnik, Croatia
1935 - VI Congress: Brussels, Belgium
1936 - VII Congress: Vienna, Austria
1937 - VIII Congress: Vienna, Austria
1938 - IX Congress: Budapest, Hungary
The congressional process resumed in 1948, and a Congress was held annually until 1954 (except in 1952) :
1948 - X Congress: Brussels, Belgium
1949 - XI Congress: Paris, France
1950 - XII Congress Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg
1951 - XIII Congress: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Resolutions and charters
Source:
Resolution on the situation in Poland (Luxembourg Congress, Luxembourg - November 2019)
Core Principles of the Legal Profession (Congress in Porto, Portugal - October 2018)
Resolution Against All Forms of Slavery (Congress in Porto, Portugal - October 2018)
Basic Principles on the Status of Refugees (Congress in Budapest, Hungary - October 2016)
Resolution on Privacy in Digital Communication (Congress in Valencia, Spain - October 2015)
Corruption, Transparency and Justice Resolution (Congress in Macau, China 2013)
Resolution on Globalisation, Tolerance and the Law (Congress in Seville, Spain 2009)
Resolution for the right to health as a basic human right.(Congress in Fes, Morocco August 31 - September 5, 2005)
Resolution advocating for the abolishment of the death penalty (Congress in Lisbon, Portugal - September 30, 2003)
Code of Conduct for Lawyers in the 21st Century that takes into account rapid changes in technology and the forces of globalization (Congress in Sydney, Australia October 27–31, 2002)
Principles for lawyers establishing a firm outside of their country, adopted and presented to the World Trade Organization (Congress in Sydney, Australia - October 27–31, 2002)
UIA publications
Enjeux européens et mondiaux de la protection des données personnelles, Editions Larcier, June 2015
Le DIP au quotidien / IPR in het Dagelijkse Leven, Editions Larcier, November 2015
Current trends in Start-Ups and Crowd Financing, Ed. Thomas Kulnigg, UIA - LexisNexis Publications Collection, December 2017
Compliance – Challenges and Opportunities for the Legal Profession, Ed. Guido de Clerq, UIA - LexisNexis Publications Collection, December 2017
Le statut des femmes et l'état de droit, Editions Larcier, July 2018
Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments and Arbitral Awards, UIA - LexisNexis Publications Collection, October 2018
Natural Resources Exploitation: Business and Human Rights, UIA - LexisNexis Publications Collection, October 2018
Legal Aspects of Artificial Intelligence, UIA - LexisNexis Publications Collection, November 2019
Drafting Effective International Contracts of Agency and Distributorship – A practical Handbook, UIA - LexisNexis Publications Collection, November 2019
International Public Procurement, UIA - LexisNexis Publications Collection, November 2019
Family Law: Challenges and Developments from an International Perspective, UIA - LexisNexis Publications Collection, June 2020
Environmental Law and Sustainable Development, UIA - LexisNexis Publications Collection, September 2020
Juriste International magazine
Juriste International is the trilingual magazine (English, French, Spanish) of the UIA. Published four times a year, it has a circulation of 3000 copies.
It presents articles by authors - members or not members of the association - on national and international legal hot topics.
Editor-in-Chief: Barbara Gislason, Minnesota, United States.
UIA awards
UIA also rewards legal professionals for their scientific work, their professionalism, their involvement in the defence of the rule of law or for the innovative aspect of their professional practice.
Monique Raynaud-Contamine Award
The Monique Raynaud-Contamine Award has been awarded from 1999 to 2018 for the best written reports submitted at the association's annual congresses.
1999 : Nelson LANDRY, Canada : Les techniques biométriques d'indentification
2000 : Augusto LOPES-CARDOSO, Portugal : Dimension juridique de l'Intervention génétique
2001 : Sandra BERBUTO & Christine PEVEE, Belgium : La protection pénale des mineurs en droit belge
Carlo MASTELLONE, Italy : Sales-related issues not covered by the CISG: assignment, set-off, statute of limitation, etc., under Italian law
2002 : W. Carter YOUNGER, USA : Employee privacy, electronic communications and workplace monitoring
2003 : Sascha R. GROSJEAN, Germany : Protecting trade secrets and commercial information – Rights of employers and employees (Young Lawyer Award)
Stefano DINDO, Italy : How to negotiate a cross-border business deal
2004 : Francesca PIZZI, Italy : Economic analysis of personality rights concerning media activities (Young Lawyer Award)
Jorge MARTI MORENO, Spain : Migration of companies within the World Trade Organization, European Union and worldwide
2005 : Rosario LEON, Spain : Los principios de precaución y desarrollo sostenible en España (Young Lawyer Award)
Peter TURNER, UK : Ethics in International Arbitration
Jacques Leroy Prize
From 2010 to 2017, Jacques Leroy Prize was awarded to a law student who, by his or her written submission, promoted the recognition of human rights in the business world.
2010 : Angela STONIER, Australia
2011 : Josephine WONG, Canada
2012 : Somda MANGLOIRE, Burkina Faso
2013 : Joel FOX, Israël
2014 : Adja CEVC, Slovenia
2015 : Jonathas LIMA, Brazil
2016 : Serge Théophile BAMBARA, Burkina Faso
2017 : Matheus RICCI PORTELLA, Brazil
Rule of Law Award
Since 2016, UIA, in partnership with LexisNexis, acknowledges and publicises individuals and/or organisations for their commitment and actions to the development and promotion of the Rule of Law.
2016 : Malaysian Bar Association, Malaysia
2017 : Saidbek NURITDINOV, President of the Union of Advocates of the Republic of Tajikistan, Tajikistan
2018 : The Honorable Ruth BADER GINSBURG, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
2019 : Bertrand FAVREAU, President of IDHAE, France
2020 : ELIL, European Lawyers in Lesvos, Greece
2021 : Latifa SHARIFI, Afghanistan
LegalTech Inspiration Award
In 2021, UIA and LexisNexis launched the LegalTech Inspiration Award in order to encourage innovation in the legal field and reward the organizations or individuals that bring new ideas to the legal world which change lawyers’ outlook, practice or working methods.
2021 : Thomas SEEBER, Realest8, Austria