Signed 20 February 1928 Effective November 1928 | Location La Havana, Cuba Signatories 20 | |
Condition Ratification by 2 states Parties 15
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Venezuela | ||
The Bustamante Code (also known in Spanish as Código de Derecho Internacional Privado) is a treaty intended to establish common rules for Private International Law in the Americas. The common ideas of the treaty were developed by Antonio Sánchez de Bustamante y Sirven and solidified during the 6th Pan American Congress held in Cuba in 1928 with the Treaty of Havana being attached as an Annex to the Bustamante Code.
The treaty was not widely accepted: the United States withdrew in the middle of negotiations, Mexico and Colombia did not sign it, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay decided to abide by the rules of Montevideo with regard to private international law, and the countries to ratify did so countries with large reservations. The treaty is a set of rules which seek to regulate the legal relations of foreign trade among the countries party to the treaty. The previously mentioned reservations cover many of the States discretion on the use of this code in cases which contradicted the country's domestic legislation, so the actual purpose of it are distorted.