Letters of credit and demand guarantees : a tale of two sets of rules of the International Chamber of Commerce

On the 24th of October 1916, a century ago, much of the world was in the midst of the devastating World War 1. The devastation, in the first place, took the form of enormous loss of life, the destruction of towns and cities and the scarring of nature. The grim aftermath of this war prompted political leaders to form the League of Nations, an intergovernmental organisation founded in 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that had ended the war. It was the first international organisation of which the principal mission was the maintenance of world peace. Its primary goals were stated in its covenant as, inter alia, “preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration”.