The Hague Convention was signed on 5 October 1961 in order to abolish legalisation requirements for foreign public documents between the signatory countries of the convention.Therefore, in these countries the document in question only needs to be apostilled with the Hague Apostille instead of having to go through several different stages for the legalisation procedure.
In physical terms, a Hague Apostille is an official certification which is added to the original document and certifies the authenticity of the signature that document bears. The official format can be of several different types, depending on the certifying country, such as a stamp, certificate or document.