Registering a letter buys three things in most people's heads: a record that it was sent, a signature on delivery, and a claim if it goes missing. You get the first two. The claim is capped at 30 SDR, somewhere around US$41, whatever was inside the envelope.
The numbers, from the Regulations that set them
registered item, lost or totally stolen 30 SDR ≈ US$41
registered M bag 150 SDR
ordinary parcel 40 SDR + 4.50 SDR per kilogramme
— or, by bilateral agreement 130 SDR flat, any weight
ordinary letter-post item no liability at allPosting charges are refunded, but the registration fee itself is not. That is the extent of the compensation.
⚠️ The indemnity is flat, not proportional. A registered envelope with a passport, a S$2,000 watch and a laptop charger gets the same 30 SDR as one with a birthday card. The figure attaches to the service class, not the contents. For value-based cover you need insured post — a different product, with its own price and its own limit.
The exclusions are the load-bearing part
Article 22 of the Convention lists what operators are liable for, and then closes the door twice:
"Designated operators shall not be liable for items other than those mentioned in 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 … In any other case not provided for in this Convention, designated operators shall not be liable."
And it forecloses argument about the size of the number:
"All provisions regarding liability of designated operators shall be strict, binding and complete. Designated operators shall in no case, even in case of severe fault, be liable above the limits provided for in the Convention and the Regulations."
The key phrase is "even in case of severe fault" — this is not a default that better evidence can overcome.
One exclusion expired, and the published text still shows it
The same article carved out e-commerce parcels — "ECOMPRO parcels" — from liability altogether. That carve-out is still visible in the consolidated Convention the UPU publishes on its own Acts page.
It stopped having effect on 1 January 2026. The 2025 Dubai congress amended Article 22, and the amended text simply drops the ECOMPRO words: liability now runs to "registered items, ordinary parcels and insured items", with no exception.
⚠️ The headline date on that instrument is 2027, and reading it would have described repealed law as current. The amending article is named in an exception list which brings it into force a year earlier, and the only way to find that is to read the commencement provision rather than the cover. Our researcher's first pass had this candidate the other way round, and the commencement check reversed it.
What this does not mean
The limits are not mean-spirited. A universal postal system moves billions of items between operators who cannot inspect each other's handling, and unlimited liability on an uninspected, undeclared package is not insurable at the prices people pay to post things. A flat indemnity is the price of having a network that works across nearly every country on earth.
Registration is not useless either. Tracking, a signature and a record are what most senders actually want, and what most disputes turn on. The one thing the fee does not buy is compensation that scales with what you put in the envelope.
⚠️ And this describes the Convention, not your national operator. A member country's own post may offer more, and many do; carriers outside the postal system operate under entirely different rules. Nothing here tells you what a specific operator owes you, only what the treaty floor is.
What to do with it
Match the product to the value. Once the contents are worth more than about US$41, registration has become a tracking product, and the real choice is between paying for insured post and carrying the risk yourself.
If the contents are worth real money, check what your own postal operator adds on top of the treaty minimum. Many add a good deal, some add nothing, and the figure is not something to assume in either direction.
And if a claim on an ordinary letter-post item is refused, the refusal is probably correct: that class carries no liability whatsoever, rather than a small one.
Where this comes from
The liability structure and both closing clauses are quoted from Article 22 of the Universal Postal Convention adopted at Abidjan in 2021, in force since 1 July 2022. The indemnity figures are from the Regulations to that Convention. The amendment removing the e-commerce carve-out is Article X of the Second Additional Protocol adopted at the 2025 Dubai congress, whose commencement is set by the protocol's own exception list rather than by its headline date.
SDR values move with the currency basket, so the US$41 figure is approximate and drifts, while the 30 SDR itself holds until the Regulations change. The next congress is the obvious thing that would move it, and an operator revising its own terms could change what sits above the treaty floor sooner than that.
