Abstract Analysing the Tension between National Digital Sovereignty and Global Legal Harmonization through UNCITRAL Model Laws ZAKIYA TALATH BBA LLB

Analysing the Tension between National Digital Sovereignty and Global Legal Harmonization through UNCITRAL Model Laws

Zakiya Talath¹ & Jaya Verma²

Abstract The expansion of digital transactions has produced an urgent need to harmonize the laws, but at the same time, it has heightened the need to have national digital sovereignty. The paper explores the underlying tension between the harmonization tools of UNCITRAL, especially the Model Law on Electronic Commerce (1996) and Model Law on Electronic Signatures (2001) and the re-emerging trend of data localization and regulatory fragmentation. The model laws of UNCITRAL create technologically neutral principles of recognition of electronic transaction that facilitate cross-border trade based on functional equivalency and party autonomy. These tools have gained significant use, and more than 70 jurisdictions have provided their provisions into the domestic laws. But the modern digital sovereignty movements do not follow this paradigm of harmonization. The needs of the data localization enforced in India by the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, the EU agenda of strategic autonomy, which is embedded into the GDPR and the Data Governance Act, and the comprehensive approach to cybersecurity in China, prioritize data control at the territorial level, national security and regulatory autonomy over legal homogeneity. This paper examines into the ability of global governance structures to fit or eventually give way to more and more fragmented digital regulation. The study, using comparative legal analysis and study of jurisdictional conflicts, has shown that harmonization and sovereignty are in dynamic opposition and not binary. The paper argues that the sustainable digital governance should be seen through a hybrid approach of retaining the idea of procedural harmonization of UNCITRAL to gain transactional efficiency, yet recognizing the validity of sovereign claims to data governance, privacy, and security. The critical issue confronted is not whether these models are compatible, but how international law can develop a system of jurisdictional interoperability that both allows commercial predictability and democratic self-determination in cyberspace.

Keywords: Harmonization, Digital Sovereignty, Cross-Border, E-Commerce Regulation, UNCITRAL.