Carrier's Liability Under International Maritime Conventions and the UNCITRAL Draft Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly Or Partly by Sea/Vezeju, Vykdanciu Tarptautini Kroviniu Vezima Vien Tik Arba is Dalies Jura, Atsakomybe, Numatyta Tarptautinese Juru Konvencijose Ir Jungtiniu Tautu Tarptautines Prekybos Teises Komisijos Sutarties Projekte. (Report‪)‬

1. Introduction Nowadays, the international carriage of goods by sea (Faghfouri 2008; Paulauskas and Bentzen 2008; Lingaitien? 2008; Afandizadeh and Moayedfar 2008) is governed by various conventions such as the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law Relating to Bills of Lading (the Hague Rules), Protocol to Amend the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to Bills of Lading 1924, (the Hague-Visby Rules) 1968, 1979; United Nations Convention on the Carriage of Goods by Sea, 1978 (the Hamburg Rules). These Rules established minimum obligations, maximum immunities and the limit of carrier's liability and aims at creating one uniform law concerning the international carriage of goods by sea. Nevertheless, none of these attempts has been successful, instead, the present legal framework consists of a disordered array of international conventions designed to regulate the carriage of goods by sea, diverse regional/sub-regional agreements, national laws and standard term contracts. As a consequence, both the applied liability rules and the degree and extent of carrier's liability vary greatly from case to case and are unpredictable. Modern transport patterns and practices have been considerably affected by the growth of containerized transportation together with technological developments on the multimodal transferring systems (Tolli and Laving 2007; Jarzemskiene 2007; Vasilis Vasiliauskas and Barysiene 2008; Afandizadeh and Moayedfar 2008; Jarzemskiene and Jarzemskis 2009; Liu et al. 2009). Increasingly, big liner shipping companies, some of which dominate the container shipments of ocean trade, are also expanding their services to offer transportation from door-to-door by involving other carriers to perform different modal stages of a multimodal transaction (Jarzemskiene and Jarzemskis 2009; Burkovskis 2008; Lingaitiene 2008; Jarzemskis and Vasilis Vasiliauskas 2007). The current liability framework reflects few developments that have taken place in terms of transport patterns, technology and markets. The international uniform regime has not been in force to govern liability for loss, damage or delay arising from multimodal transport.