In 2009 Aruba ratified and implemented the ICAO Cape Town Convention and the Aircraft Protocol and thus became the first offshore registry signatory of the convention. From this date all the air finance transactions completed by debtors situated in Aruba or involving airframes pertaining to aircraft therein registered can enjoy the protection given by the international treaty.
Parties can register their interests in the International Registry via their website, www.internationalregistry.aero created under the Cape Town Convention in order to give notice to third parties and preserve their conventional priority.
In essence the Convention, with its Protocols, is designed to overcome the problem of obtaining secure and readily enforceable rights in aircraft objects, railway rolling stock and space assets which by their nature have no fixed location, and in the case of space assets are not on earth at all. The problem is not so much one of determining what law applies – which can be resolved by a uniform conflict of laws Convention such as the 1948 Geneva Convention on the International Recognition of Rights in Aircraft – but rather the widely differing approaches of legal systems to security and title reservation rights, engendering uncertainty among intending financiers as to the efficacy of their rights. The result is to inhibit the extension of finance, particularly to developing countries, and to increase borrowing costs. The Convention and its supporting Protocols have five basic objectives: