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This chapter highlights Congolese perspectives on the Hague Principles. It first outlines the sources of private international law for international commercial contracts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Until July of 2016, Articles 8–15 of the Decree of May 4, 1895 (Title II of the Civil Code Book I) constituted the most relevant national source of private international law. As of January of 2019, there is no plan from the Congolese authorities for the adoption of new conflict of laws provisions after the repeal of Title II of the Congolese Civil Code I. If new rules of private international law were developed and adopted, the Hague Principles could theoretically play an important part in providing the Congolese lawmakers with apt rules on choice of law in international commercial contracts. However, since most Congolese lawmakers, judges, and legal advisors do not know the Hague Principles yet, their use for the development of new statutes is practically unlikely. Hence, it is important to widely diffuse the Hague Principles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This chapter describes the relationship between the Organisation pour l’Harmonisation en Afrique du Droit des Affaires (OHADA; the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa) and the Hague Principles. OHADA is an African supranational organization which was created on October 17, 1993. As per the Preamble and Article 1 of the OHADA Treaty, OHADA aims at creating simple, modern, and harmonized business law rules in Africa. To achieve this goal, OHADA has five institutions: (i) the Conference of Heads of State and Government; (ii) the Council of Ministers; (iii) the Common Court of Justice and Arbitration; (iv) the Regional Training Centre for Legal Officers; and (v) the Permanent Secretariat. Uniform Acts are the main instrument of OHADA. To understand the rules governing choice of law in commercial international contracts under OHADA law, it is important to examine the relation between the acts of OHADA (Uniform Acts and regulations) and the domestic law of the Member States. Meanwhile, there is no uniform codification of private international law under OHADA law. The chapter then explains that the Working Group on the Preliminary Draft Uniform Act on the Law of Obligations in the OHADA Region in 2015 did not use the Hague Principles, and why this omission should be reversed.