The intergovernmental organisation UNIDROIT – the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law – seated in the Villa Aldobrandini in Rome, Italy, offered an internship to Mr Dylan Reeves, an LLM student in International Commercial Law at the University of Johannesburg (UJ).

The internship will be for 3-6 months, during which period Mr Reeves will assist Mr William Brydie-Watson, legal officer at UNIDROIT, with preparations for the diplomatic conference to adopt the MAC Protocol to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment.

The MAC Protocol extends the application of the Cape Town Convention to the financing of mining, agricultural and construction equipment. South Africa is a contracting State to the Cape Town Convention and to the Aircraft Protocol. In a recent speech at the Research Centre for Private International Law (on 13 June 2018), Deputy Minister Ms M R Mhaule expressed her support for the activities of UNIDROIT in relation to the MAC Protocol.

UNIDROIT has 63 Member States and contributes to the ever-increasing unification of international commercial law. The UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts and the Cape Town Convention are its two flagship instruments. UNIDROIT has cooperation agreements with 16 universities, of which one is situated in sub-Saharan Africa, namely the Research Centre for Private International Law in Emerging Countries at the Faculty of Law, UJ.