Road and rail transport agreements in the context
of the COVID-19 crisis response
Capacity Building Webinar
27-28 January 2021
Day 1. Road transport
27 January 2021
Fedor Kormilitsyn
Economic Affairs Officer
Transport Connectivity and
Logistics Section
International conventions on transport
-administered by UNECE
-a number of ESCAP member States acceded to many of these
conventions
Multilateral agreements on transport facilitation (40+)
-concluded by the member states of ASEAN, CIS, ECO, GMS,
SCO, TRACECA (subregional agreements)
- concluded between certain “ad-hoc” groups of countries
Bilateral agreements on international road transport (200+)
- for 32 member countries of the Asian Highway Network
Overview of legal framework for road
transport in the ESCAP region
Detailed information on status of accession available at the
UNECE website at:
https://unece.org/transport/documents/2020/12/status-united-
nations-transport-agreements-and-conventions-serviced-ece
International agreements and
conventions on transport
Covers:
Multilateral agreements on transport facilitation (12)
concluded by the member states of ASEAN, CIS, ECO, GMS,
TRACECA, etc.
Bilateral agreements on international road transport (200+)
32 member countries of the Asian Highway Network
Available at:
https://tadb.unescap.org/
ESCAP Database of agreements on
international road transport (2016)
ESCAP has
determined the
content of the
database retrieving it
from web-based legal
resources, collected
and processed 200 bi-
/ multi-lateral
agreements
Simple and user-
friendly structure
facilitating access
to the data
Fully accessible to
the public and
available online at
ESCAP website
ESCAP Database of Agreements
on International Road Transport (2016)
Database of Agreements on International Road
TransportESCAP Member States Bilateral Agreements
on International Road Transport
Multilateral Agreementson Transport Facilitation
Afghanistan ● ●
Armenia ● ●
Azerbaijan ● ●
Bangladesh ●
Bhutan ●
Brunei Darussalam ●
Cambodia ● ●
China ● ●
Democratic People's Republic of Korea ●
Georgia ● ●
India ●
Indonesia ● ●
Islamic Republic of Iran ● ●
Japan ●
Kazakhstan ● ●
Kyrgyzstan ● ●
Lao People's Democratic Republic ● ●
Malaysia ● ●
Mongolia ●
Myanmar ● ●
Nepal ●
Pakistan ● ●
Philippines ● ●
Republic of Korea ●
Russian Federation ● ●
Singapore ● ●
Sri Lanka ●
Tajikistan ● ●
Thailand ● ●
Turkey ● ●
Turkmenistan ● ●
Uzbekistan ● ●
Viet Nam ● ●Click Level
Document map
ESCAP Model Subregional Agreement
on Transport Facilitation
https://www.unescap.org/resources/model-subregional-agreement-transport-facilitation
ESCAP Model Bilateral Agreementon International Road Transport
https://www.unescap.org/resources/model-bilateral-agreement-international-road-transport
United Nations Inter-Agency Project on
TRANSPORT AND TRADE CONNECTIVITY IN
THE AGE OF PANDEMICS
Component on developing crisis response through
upgrading agreements on international land transport
in Asia and the Pacific
First lessons learned
o Existing legal instruments covering international
carriage of goods and passengers typically lack
provisions on cooperation while dealing with
critical situations (such as current pandemic crisis
or other potential extraordinary situations)
o Lack of such provisions contributes to disrupting
the usual way of operation of international supply
and logistics chains.
Objectives of this Webinar
o Present main findings of policy briefs on railway
and road transport agreements (transport of
goods)
o Collect feedback
o Identify potential next steps which may include:
• formulation of proposals for crisis-response
provisions in regional and bilateral transport
agreements
and/or
• elaboration of a model bilateral agreement with
insertion of such recommended clauses
THANK YOU
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