The New York Convention is the blueprint of the international arbitration system. The history of the Convention in Colombia reveals the complexity of the interactions between domestic decision-makers and international law. Even though Colombia was an active participant in the 1958 Conference on International Arbitration, congressional approval for the Convention proved a challenging crusade. Decades of setbacks concluded with the ratification of the Convention in 1979, only to be followed by a new challenge, as the law approving the treaty was declared unconstitutional in 1988. The Convention was re-Approved in 1990. From 1990 to 2011, however, the Supreme Court was reluctant to apply the Convention in accordance with its spirit. In 2011, the Court turned around its own jurisprudence on arbitration, adopting a pro-Arbitration approach that has lasted until today. The Court has dealt with many aspects of the Convention, including its interaction with domestic rules of civil procedure, the notion of arbitral award, public policy, reciprocity, and the interplay between the New York Convention and other international treaties. The history of the Convention in Colombia is a global south example of the manifold challenges involved in the use and implementation of international law instruments at the domestic level.