UN Website

The UN website serves as a gateway to an immense store of information and documentation on the world body and its activities. Find:
• background information on the UN and its membership;
• links to essential documentation;
• information on upcoming, ongoing, and past conferences;
• sessional information and documentation of the principal organs and their subsidiary bodies, with background information for each body (via its "Main Bodies" link)
• documents via the UN Documentation Centre (described in adjacent tab)
• subject area organization, reflecting the UN's five main mandates, with links to many UN bodies and programs active in these areas. Here can be found sessional information and documentation on the activities of each body, as well as selected UN publications. For more about 'International Law,' the single most important subject link for our purposes, see the adjacent International Law tab.

Searching the UN Homepage

The "Search" link of the UN Homepage (powered by Google) allows for BASIC and ADVANCED full-text searching of all material posted on the UN website and any site linked to it. This makes it possible to search the text of materials posted on the UN website and on the website of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, for example, simultaneously. Both search screens offer a "Search Tips" link, containing very detailed instructions with numerous examples.

When to use the 'search' feature

The UN website has links to the ODS, and most of its documents are contained in the ODS database. However, there are materials on the UN website (and sites linked to it) that are not available in the ODS and may not even be described by UNBISnet. For this reason, whenever we have citations for UN materials but ODS will not retrieve them, it is a good idea to 'search' the UN website. For example, one may find:
• unedited advance versions of selected UN documents (to be issued as official UN documents in due time);
• selected reports on UN seminars and working papers issued mainly for the participants and 'in-house' use;
• selected publications (even sales publications), particularly those dealing with human rights or trade and development issues;
• UN publications which are (presently) only available in electronic version, e.g. the Legislative History of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN Doc. HR/PUB/07/1).

Advanced search options

Searching by

• search by phrase or keyword;
• rank/sort results by relevance or date.

For example: to search for a UN publication whose title is known, enter the title as a PHRASE search and sort results by relevance. The desired publication (or webpage that posted it) will usually be among the first items listed.

Searching by

• to find the document or publication belonging to a known document symbol (e.g. HR/PUB/07/1),
• enter the symbol as a PHRASE search
• sort results by relevance.

This works very nicely for UN documentation posted on the UN website. The item sought will usually be listed first and reveals at a glance that it does contain the full text: the trailing elements of the URL will be the document symbol and language identification (thus the last elements of the URL for A/CN.4/525 will read: ...A/CN.4/525).

UN homepage links:
• About the UN
• The UN Charter can be found under the heading "Main Documents". Among the items grouped together here is a link to the most up-to-date version of the Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs (which also offers full-text searching of the publication). Apart from "Main Documents", this page does not offer much for legal research.

International Law Website

This is the most important UN web page for international law research, and all of its sublinks are worth exploring, particularly:

The Research Guide

• Provides an overview of the various legal bodies and courts established by the United Nations and should be visited first;

The page of the Sixth Committee

• the "legal arm" of the General Assembly, offers in its "Summaries of work" detailed descriptions of the Assembly’s current work on legally relevant agenda items;

The page of the International Law Commission

• has as a large section entitled "Researching the work of the Commission."

The Analytical Guide to the Work of the International Law Commission

• the single most valuable single research aid for drafting of International Laws.

the Global Search enables searching across the following=
 UN legal publications (feature recently cataloged by Colorado Law Library)=
:

http://www.un.org/law/UNlegalpublications/index.html

Yearbook of the International Law Commission -- UNCITRAL yearbook -- United=
Nations juridical yearbook -- UNCITRAL publications -- Reports of internat=
ional arbitral awards -- Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs -- =
Summaries of Judgments, Advisory Opinions and Orders of the International C=
ourt of Justice -- Repertoire of Practice of the Security Council -- Procee=
dings of Diplomatic Conferences

search by Boolean “mount w/2 fitzroy” or by document number A/CN.4/519 as an exact phrase

UN Documentation Centre Website

The Centre provides:
• links to the ODS, UNBISnet and UN-I-QUE;
• access to the UN Documentation Research Guide - an expert's guide to the UN documentation system (with search tips included), and special chapters on the environment, human rights, international law, and peacekeeping;
• Resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council (going back to 1946), and of the Economic & Social Council (back to 1992);
• Sessional listings of General Assembly meetings and documents beginning with the 57th session (2002/ 2003) - with links to the full texts;
• Yearly listings (from 1994 onward) of Security Council meetings & documents with links to the full texts (docs. are grouped in categories);
• access to UN Pulse, keeping researchers abreast of recently issued major UN publications and documents and offering links to their full text.