The Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents, the Apostille Convention, or the Apostille Treaty, is an international treaty drafted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law. It specifies the modalities through which a document issued in one of the signatory countries can be certified for legal purposes in all the other signatory states. A certification under the terms of the convention is called an Apostille (from Latin post itla and then French: a marginal note) or Hague apostille. It is an international certification comparable to a notarization in domestic law, and normally supplements a local notarization of the document. If the convention applies between two countries, such an apostille is sufficient to certify a document’s validity, and removes the need for double-certification, by the originating country and then by the receiving country.