Actes et documents de la Vingtième session / Proceedings of the Twentieth Session Tome I - Matières diverses/Miscellanous matters

This publication is the first in a series of three volumes entitled Proceedings of the Twentieth Session (2005). It includes at the start general information such as membership of the delegations and then the minutes of the Opening and Closing Sessions. The complete text of the Final Act of the Twentieth Session appears thereafter. This is followed by the preliminary documents, the conclusions of the Special Commissions of 2003, 2004 and 2005 on General Affairs and Policy of the Conference, together with the working documents and minutes of the First Commission, which dealt with these questions at the Plenary Session.

With 78 Members (77 States and the European Union) representing all continents, the Hague Conference on Private International Law is a global inter-governmental organisation. A melting pot of different legal traditions, it develops and services multilateral legal instruments, which respond to global needs. An increasing number of non-Member States are also becoming Parties to the Hague Conventions. As a result, the work of the Conference encompasses more than 140 countries around the world.

The statutory mission of the Conference is to work for the "progressive unification" of these rules. This involves finding internationally-agreed approaches to issues such as jurisdiction of the courts, applicable law, and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in a wide range of areas, from commercial law and banking law to international civil procedure and from child protection to matters of marriage and personal status.
Over the years, the Conference has, in carrying out its mission, increasingly become a centre for international judicial and administrative co-operation in the area of private law, especially in the fields of protection of the family and children, of civil procedure and commercial law.

The ultimate goal of the Organisation is to work for a world in which, despite the differences between legal systems, persons - individuals as well as companies - can enjoy a high degree of legal security.