A century of UNIDROIT: Australian lawyers and global private law

From his office in Rome, Brydie-Watson clarifies that he is responding to LSJ Online questions in his personal capacity, rather than on behalf of UNIDROIT.

He says, “You can divide each office’s work here into three areas: legislative technical work, engaging with stakeholders and member states, and the third is the more institutional aspects of being in a small intergovernmental organisation.”

Brydie-Watson humbly says it was his common law background, Commonwealth training, and fluent English that won him his role at UNIDROIT in 2014. Certainly, he marvels, “I’ve done it longer than I thought I would, initially. Every day is so different, there’s no Groundhog Day at UNIDROIT.”

Established in 1926, UNIDROIT is an intergovernmental organisation whose objective is to harmonise private international law across countries through uniform rules, international conventions, and the production of model laws, sets of principles, guides and guidelines. UNIDROIT has 65 member states representing 90 per cent of global nominal GDP and 75 per cent of the world’s population.

Since its founding, UNIDROIT has prepared over 70 studies and drafts, many of which have resulted in international instruments, including international conventions, model laws, principles and legal and contractual guides. Australia is party to a number of groundbreaking treaties and conventions, including the UNIDROIT treaty on international wills (since 2015), making cross-border estate planning and the enforcement of foreign assets vastly simpler for Australians; the Cape Town Convention and subsequent protocols, including the MAC Protocol (Mining, Agricultural, and Construction equipment); and the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts.

Since 1973, Australia has been an active member state of UNIDROIT (the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law). Under the management of the Attorney-General’s Department, specifically the Private International Law (PIL) team, the Australian Government cooperates with UNIDROIT to ensure harmony and relevance of commercial and private law between Australia and its fellow members.

Brydie-Watson’s work has spanned diverse responsibilities and sectors, engaging with international colleagues, stakeholders, and members.

“My legislative work has been within the same family of law, in access to credit and secure transactions,” he explains. “But, I work on very different instruments within that very broad field.”

The first five years of his tenure were spent working on UNIDROIT’s most recent treaty, the Cape Town Convention, or the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment, and its fourth protocol, the Mining, Agriculture, and Construction, or MAC protocol.

“That took five years to develop, and that’s all about asset-based finance, and facilitating a global treaty system that will reduce legal uncertainty and financing costs for mining, agriculture, and construction equipment around the world.”

He then moved on to receivables finance, trade finance, and factoring, and spent close to five years working on the Model Law on Factoring and its Guide to Enactment.

“That was a soft law instrument, and in a very different field. Rather than basing finance on physical equipment, you’re basing finance on future payments, which allows SMEs and small companies to gain finance against future sales, which is very important, particularly for companies that don’t have large physical assets they can finance against or in developing countries who are part of global supply chains.”

This year, he began work on the fourth and most recent instrument, a new legal guide on agricultural finance, designed to provide guidance to countries seeking to undertake broad reforms to facilitate access to credit for farmers.

He marvels that he began as the youngest, most junior officer and has evolved into one of the most senior, experienced officers at UNIDROIT.

“Recently, I have been primarily responsible for the engagement of member states, multilateral stakeholders, and regional stakeholders in the Asia Pacific region. That includes liaison between UNIDROIT and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Organisation, or APEC, since 2016.”

He has also taken on a coordination role with other important regional organisations, including the Asian Development Bank, along with coordination between UNIDROIT’s network of Correspondents (appointed by the Governing Council), made up of high-profile legal experts in different countries in the Asian region.

“I’ve been doing that for about seven years,” Brydie-Watson explains. “I’ve always been more engaged with the Asia Pacific region during my time at UNIDROIT, but I think we’ve deepened that engagement over my 12 years here.”

In April this year, Brydie-Watson joined UNIDROIT’s Secretary-General Ignacio Tirado and Deputy Secretary-General Professor Anna Veneziano to visit Sydney as part of a broader trip to the Asia Pacific region.

The visit to Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney was historic, he explains. It was the first high-level visit to Australia this century, as part of a broader Pacific visit.

“As the resident Australian on staff, I was very proud to have delivered this visit with the Secretary General and the Deputy Secretary General. It was the first very high-level visit to Australia for some time, certainly this millennium.”

The trio went to Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch in New Zealand, then Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney to visit the government stakeholders in Wellington and Canberra, along with academic, expert, and private sector organisations.

“We wanted to utilise the opportunity this centenary gave us to re-engage with Australian stakeholders, which was very successful in that regard, but also to go a bit beyond Australia. We’re very underrepresented in the Pacific region – Australia is our only member state in the region. Unfortunately, New Zealand is not yet a member state, despite having implemented several of our treaties.”

He explains, “There was a large international conference down in Christchurch that brought together important, useful legal stakeholders from Fiji, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, and Timor-Leste, and many of these government officials and legal experts did not have any real knowledge of UNIDROIT before that conference. I hope it’s a first step towards broader understanding and use of our instruments in the region.”

Brydie-Watson is referring to the Christchurch Conference on International and Transnational Legal Frameworks (CCITLF 2026).

Commonly referred to as “conflict of laws”, private international law requires diplomacy as much as it requires sharp legal knowledge. The laws determine jurisdiction over particular disputes, how foreign judgments are enforced, and the handling of private disputes that cross borders, such as family law, torts, property, or international contracts. It is unsurprising, then, that UNIDROIT holds frequent conferences, workshops, and events globally to educate and convene members on matters of contract law, transnational law, aviation, secured transactions, and international partnerships.

As technology evolves and the law inevitably evolves, the “work in progress” tasks listed on UNIDROIT’s website for current evaluation, collaborative drafting, examination, approval (or otherwise by member states, NGOs, and non-member states where appropriate), and adoption of the Convention or Protocol. At present, works in progress include laws regarding bank insolvency, agri-enterprises, verified carbon credits, private art collections, reinsurance contracts, and space.

UNIDROIT is governed by three tiers, made up of a Secretariat, a Governing Council and a General Assembly. The Secretariat is the executive organ that oversees its Work Programme. The Secretary-General is appointed by the Governing Council on the nomination of the President of the Institute. The Secretary-General is assisted by a team of international civil servants and supporting staff.

The Governing Council supervises all policy aspects. It is made up of one ex officio member, the President of the Institute, and 25 elected Members (eminent judges, practitioners, academics and civil servants). The Governing Council is chaired by the President of the Institute, who is a Member of the Council ex officio.

The General Assembly, made up of one representative from each member government, is the ultimate decision-making organ of UNIDROIT: it votes on the Institute’s Budget each year; it approves the Work Programme every three years; it elects the Governing Council every five years. Presently, the Australian Ambassador to Italy, Julianne Cowley, is Australia’s Permanent Representative to UNIDROIT.

Brydie-Watson explains that Australia has joined three treaties in the past 12 years: the Wills Convention, the Cape Town Convention, and the Aircraft Protocol.

He notes, “There are very few other international organisations that have had their treaties implemented in Australia in the past 12 years, so I think this already demonstrates a strong interest from Australia in the legal impact from ratifying our treaties, which we’re very proud of.”

Brydie-Watson was especially pleased to see the Wills Convention implemented, “because that really does help Australians with international aspects in their wills, to create legal clarity, and that’s very important given our history as a migrant nation, with many Australians having assets overseas or international aspects to their wills.”

The Cape Town Convention and the Aircraft Protocol are “very, very economically significant”, he adds.

Further, the process to ratify these three treaties was very efficient by Australian standards, he points out.

“It went through the Senate Committee on the Joint Committee for International Treaties very effectively, because the strong legal rules that have already been implemented in 90 countries around the world really do reduce the cost of credit for aircraft.”

He explains that, upon needing to renew its fleet and acquire new aircraft with a 20-plus-year lifespan, Qantas realised that, if Australia had implemented the Aircraft Protocol, it would be able to secure long-term finance much more cheaply.

“That lowers their financing costs, lowers their operating costs, and makes them more competitive, and hopefully also potentially allows them to lower the cost of flights, so it sails through the implementation process very quickly,” Brydie-Watson says. “As far as I can tell from talking to the stakeholders involved in Australia, it’s working relatively effectively there. There was some High Court litigation on it relatively recently, but it certainly has had a very meaningful impact, I think, on the cost of credit and for aviation finance in the country.”

Brydie-Watson’s own flight plans will inevitably return him to Rome for the immediate future.

“Rome certainly feels like home,” he says.

“I’ve managed to get my Italian up to a very, very good level, so I feel comfortable in Rome, and able to take advantage of all the opportunities that this beautiful, historical, cultural city provides.”

UNIDROIT is a very exciting and dynamic institution to work for, he says. “There’s always something new to do. I have wonderful colleagues and clients, so I think I’ve already stayed here much longer than I intended to when I first joined, because of these aspects.”

He concludes, “My work here is far from done.”