{"id":13189,"date":"2026-03-17T11:30:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T06:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=13189"},"modified":"2026-03-20T17:28:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T11:58:38","slug":"what-is-force-majeure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-force-majeure\/","title":{"rendered":"Force Majeure"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Force Majeure Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Several Gulf energy producers recently declared force majeure on oil and gas shipments after disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Force Majeure<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The concept of force majeure refers to an <\/span><b>extraordinary event<\/b> <b>rendering the legal obligations between<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> two or more <\/span><b>contractually bound parties impossible to fulfill.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The phrase comes from French and <\/span><b>literally means \u201csuperior force\u2019\u2019.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is related to the<\/span><b> concept of an act of God,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> an <\/span><b>event <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for which <\/span><b>no party can be held accountable.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This type of event must be entirely beyond the parties\u2019 reasonable control.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a <\/span><b>precautionary measure against breach of contract<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, many commercial agreements contain force majeure contract clauses enumerating a list of major events that could result in non-performance of contractual duties.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Force majeure <\/span><b>does not encompass events<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that are <\/span><b>predictable, preventable, or controllable<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, or that <\/span><b>result from the negligence<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or malfeasance of one or more parties.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Force majeure <\/span><b>incidents typically include wars, natural disasters<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (e.g., earthquakes), <\/span><b>terrorist attacks, epidemics<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and civil unrest, such as riots.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When a force majeure clause is triggered,<\/span><b> any party affected by the event must notify <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the <\/span><b>other party<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or parties to the contract.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>affected parties<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will <\/span><b>describe the start date and circumstances <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of the incident and cite the specific section in the contract that allows them to declare a force majeure incident.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>contracting parties mus<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t also <\/span><b>prove their reasonable efforts to mitigate the circumstances<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that have rendered the fulfillment of their duties impracticable.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Such events may <\/span><b>result in the<\/b> <b>parties delaying their obligations <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for a period of time, <\/span><b>revising the contract terms, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">or a<\/span><b>greeing on the contract\u2019s cancellation.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The application of force majeure can<\/span><b> vary across legal systems<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, with some jurisdictions requiring a more stringent definition than others.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>In India,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the doctrine of force majeure is <\/span><b>governed by section 56 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 (\u201cIndian Contract Act\u201d).\u00a0<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It provides that a <\/span><b>contract becomes void <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">if an <\/span><b>act to be performed<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> under the contract becomes <\/span><b>impossible <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">after the contract is made, or, by <\/span><b>reason of some event, which the promisor could not prevent,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the act to be performed becomes unlawful.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Force majeure <\/span><b>conflicts <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">with the concept of<\/span><b> \u201cpacta sunt servanda,\u201d<\/b> <b>a principle<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in international law that <\/span><b>agreements must be kept and not wriggled out of.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/video\/newsfeed\/2026\/3\/15\/what-is-force-majeure-and-why-are-some-gulf-countries-invoking-it\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">ALJ<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The concept of force majeure refers to an extraordinary event rendering the legal obligations between two or more contractually bound parties impossible to fulfill. Read more about Force Majeure, Meaning, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":93236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6140,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-13189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-force-majeure","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93264,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13189\/revisions\/93264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}