Trade Facilitation and E-business(UN/CEFACT)
Introduction
The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) is a subsidiary, intergovernmental body of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) which serves as a focal point within the United Nations Economic and Social Council for trade facilitation recommendations and electronic business standards. It has global membership and its members are experts from intergovernmental organizations, individual countries' authorities and also from the business community.
Key areas of work
In focus
The 40th UN/CEFACT Forum has concluded, and we would like to thank all participants for your contribution to its success! This Jubilee Forum brought together a record level of 350 in-person participants from 55 countries as well as 1,500 remote participants from across the globe.
Most of the 25 UN/CEFACT projects have made significant progress during the Forum and at least 10 new project proposals were developed. Several emerging topics have been presented in over 35 insightful discussions and engaging sessions, which will certainly shape our work in the months to come.
As we look ahead, please save the date for the forthcoming activities of UN/CEFACT:
- 41th UN/CEFACT Forum, Bangkok, Thailand, 2-6 October 2023.
- 29th UN/CEFACT Plenary Session, Geneva, Switzerland, 9-10 November 2023.
Highlights
30 May 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Geofencing facilities”. The purpose of this project is to review current practices, document and outline the recommendations to geofencing for BIC and SMDG facilities. The scope of the white paper will cover the facilities such as Ocean Terminals, Container Depots, Repair Yards, Freight Stations, Rail Yards, etc. The project will outline the rule sets for different ‘families’ of geofences and how to define them, demonstrate examples with quality markers, and explain acceptable shapes, provide guidance for a process to support a review panel in evaluating geofences. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: David Roff.
15 May 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Critical minerals traceability and sustainability”. The purpose of this project is to uplift verifiable critical raw materials supply chain resilience and sustainability through digital standards for data and trust. Both goals are met through traceability and transparency measures that this project will support through standardization. There are already many supply chain traceability platforms on the market. None will dominate the world’s supply chains and so must improve their interoperability so that supply chains can be traced across multiple independent platforms. This is the primary purpose of this project – namely to focus on the exchange of supply chain information between platforms. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Nancy Norris.
We invite you to join our one-hour kick-off meeting. All will be identical so you need only attend one of the four sessions that matches your time zone and availability.
- Meeting 1: Thu 8th June 8:00am UTC (1am PT) – Register here
- Meeting 2: Thu 8th June 8:00pm UTC (1pm PT) – Register here
- Meeting 3: Thu 15th June 8:00am UTC (1am PT) – Register here
- Meeting 4: Thu 15th June 8:00pm UTC (1pm PT) – Register here
15 May 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Buy Ship Pay data exchange structures for trade finance facilitation”. This project will be focused on developing, maintaining and publishing the semantic foundation to support the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR) implementation by reducing existing trade finance barriers caused by the continued reliance on the exchange of paper documents. In order to support the implementation of MLETR for title transfer, this project will develop data exchange structures as subsets of the Buy/Ship/Pay Reference Data Model (BSP RDM) to support key trade finance data exchanges as part of the UNECE “digital and green transformations for sustainable development in the ECE region” strategy. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Sue Probert.
6 April 2023: This is to announce a 30-day public review until 2023/05/05 concerning the White Paper on the technical applications of Business Standards for Sustainable Tourism project. Please use the Public Comment Log provided to facilitate the preparation of a Disposition Log by the Project Team.
[2023] [2022] [2021] [2020] [2019] [2018] [2017] [2016] [2015 and prior .....]
Upcoming Events
23 November
Palais des Nations
Geneva
Switzerland
Recent Events
22 - 23 May
Library of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, Baku Azerbaijan
12 May
on-line and Salle XVII, Palais de Nations, 1201 Geneva, Switzerland
