Art. 32 is the first Article in the Section on “Conciliation Proceedings”. Other Articles in this Section deal with the Conciliation Rules (Art. 33), the conduct of conciliation (Art. 34) and the prohibition to rely on statements made in the course of conciliation in other proceedings (Art. 35).

Art. 32 is substantively identical to Art. 41, its counterpart in the Chapter on Arbitration. The only difference is the substitution of the word “Commission” for “Tribunal”.

Art. 32 was drafted in close conjunction with Art. 41. All drafts provided in identical terms that commissions and tribunals, respectively, would be judges of their own competence (History, Vol. I, pp. 154, 156, 186, 188). There was practically no separate discussion of this provision concerning its relation to conciliation commissions (History, Vol. II, pp. 399, 408, 508, 783, 784, 791, 800, 946). An inconclusive discussion on whether a decision by a conciliation commission on its competence should only be a non-binding recommendation (at pp. 206, 407/8) is not reflected in the Convention's text. The idea to submit the question of jurisdiction in conciliation proceedings to separate arbitration was dropped at an early stage of the drafting (at p. 156).