CONVENTION A/P.4/5/82 RELATING TO INTER-STATES ROAD TRANSIT OF GOODS
THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE ECONOMIC COMMUNITY OF WEST AFRICAN STATES,
RECALLING paragraphs 3 and 4 of Article 22 and Article 23 of the Treaty of the Economic Community of
West African States relating to customs and trade matters and Article 11 of the Protocol relating to the
concept of products originating from Member States ;
ACCEPTING the principles of the Convention of the United Nations Conference on Trade and
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Development on transit of goods within landlocked countries adopted on 8 July, 1965 ;
CONSIDERING that it is necessary to set up an Inter-States road transit system in order to facilitate the
transportation of goods between the territories of the Member States ;
CONSCIOUS of the fact that Inter-States Road Transit System may facilitate the compilation of statistics
of movement of goods ;
CONVINCED that, in order to ensure that these statistics are comprehensive and reliable, it is necessary
to ensure that the Member States collaborate at the administrative level and that the documents of the
Inter-States road transit contain the necessary data ;
HAVE AGREED AS FOLLOWS :
CHAPTER 1
ARTICLE 1
DEFINITIONS
In this Convention :
"Treaty" means the Treaty of the Economic Community of West African States ;
"Member State" or "Member States" means a Member State or Member States of the Economic
Community of West African States ;
"Inter-State Road Transit" (ISRT) means a regime that allows the transportation of goods by road from
one Customs Office in a Member State to another Customs Office in another Member State through one
or more Member States free of duties, taxes and restrictions while in transit. Such goods shall be
accompanied with a set of customs documents and shall not be off-loaded or transferred while in transit ;
"Principal Obligee" means any natural or legal person who, by a customs declaration, applies to carry
out an Inter-State Road Transit operation and is thus responsible to the competent authorities for the
regular execution of this operation ;
"Means of Transport" means any road vehicle, trailer, semi-trailer of container used for the conveyance
of goods ;
"Office of Departure" means the Customs Office where the Inter-State Road Transit operation begins ;