The UINL institutional meetings were held in Dakar, Senegal, from 8 to 10 May 2025.
On the agenda were the Steering Committee meeting, the General Council, a forum on the land tenure system challenged by land registration (immatriculation system), presentation of the programme of the candidates for the next UINL presidency 2026-2028, and the vote on a text of major importance for the world notarial profession, the International Code of Notariat.
This new text, already known as ‘Dakar Code’, was adopted on 9 May 2025 by the General Assembly of Member Notariats meeting in extraordinary session in Dakar.
As a flagship project of the legislature of UINL President Lionel Galliez, this Code is conceived as a non-binding reference text aimed at strengthening notarial systems and, more broadly, as an introduction to the Continental legal tradition.
This text is the result of more than two years of extensive collective work. It brings together and defines the principles and values of the world notariat, while respecting the diversity of member notariats.
“Respecting the diversity and richness of national laws, both present and future, the Union does not intend, with this Code, to impose a uniform model. (…) This Code helps to clarify what constitutes Continental law by demonstrating that the notarial institution is one of its essential and characteristic components. Continental law aims to strike a balance between moral and social values, ensuring legal security. Through their impartiality, notaries contribute to contractual equilibrium. Furthermore, by the nature and effects of the instruments they draw up, notaries address three fundamental needs of legal security: the need for prevention, met by a public service that eliminates uncertainties and enables individuals and businesses to act with confidence; the need for harmony, fulfilled by preventing conflicts in the human relationships that shape society; and the need for protection of individuals and their rights, addressed through the creation of legal instruments that are beyond dispute and endure over time”. (Extract from the preamble to the International Code of Notariat adopted in Dakar on 9 May 2025).
