Hamburg Rules 1978

The Hamburg Rules, the 1978 UN Convention on the Carriage of Goods by Sea, came into force on 1 November 1992 and shift the liability balance toward cargo. They drop the error-in-navigation defense, base liability on presumed fault, raise the limit to 835 SDR per package or 2.5 SDR per kilogram, and extend the time bar to two years. Adoption is thin: no major flag or trading state has ratified, so the rules govern a small share of world trade and rarely displace Hague-Visby in practice.