The Hague Protocol, officially the Protocol to Amend the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Carriage by Air, is a treaty signed on September 28, 1955, in The Hague. It serves to amend the Warsaw Convention. While officially the Hague Protocol is intended to become a single entity with the Warsaw Convention,^[1] it has only been ratified by 137 of the original 152 parties to the Warsaw Convention.^[2] The binding version of the treaty is written in French, but certified versions also exist in English and Spanish. The official depository of the treaty is the Government of Poland.^[3]

The Warsaw Convention was established to create a legal basis for commercial aviation, both cargo and passenger. Specifically, it allowed for the basis of liability to be assigned to air-carriers in the event of an accident.^[4]

There were multiple reasons as to why the Hague Protocol was added as a provision to the Warsaw Convention. Firstly, as the original Convention was written in 1929 and with the advance of technology and law the original treaty had to be updated.^[5] Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the Hague Protocol limited the liability that commercial airliners would have to take on in the event of an accident.^[6]