Search Help for the United Nation Treaty Series Online Collection

The UNTS Search feature has 2 options: Basic Search and Advanced Search.

Basic Search

This type of search was developed to quickly locate the relevant records by entering a key word (or a combination of words) that you believe are present in the title of the treaty. If you enter more than one word you can adjust the search to:

  • Find those words exactly as they are entered (MATCH THIS PHRASE)
    Example: <Brazil France> will find all agreements where both Brazil AND France appear in this sequence, but not the ones where they appear as France and Brazil.
  • Find all the words entered independently of the sequence you entered them (MATCH ALL THESE WORDS)
    Example: <Brazil France> will find all agreements where both Brazil and France appear, either as Brazil and then France OR France and then Brazil.
  • Find all treaties that have at least one of the words you entered in the title (MATCH ANY OF THESE WORDS)
    Example: <Brazil France> will find all agreements where either Brazil or France appear or both.

Similarly, you can select an agreement by its popular name from the list of available titles, such as Antarctic Treaty, Geneva Conventions, etc. In this instance, only the original agreement under its popular name will be displayed.

You may also access from this page the UNTS Cumulative Indexes and the Monthly Statements of Treaties and International Agreements for further reference.

Browsing the "Search Results" list

The number of documents found in the database is identified on the "Search Results" list and is displayed in groups of 25 per screen. If more than 25 documents were found, you would have an option to click on the link "NEXT" to have the next 25 documents listed or the link "PREVIOUS" to return to a previous group of 25.

Each entry on the list is assigned a sequential number followed by a brief summary for the relevant record which includes main title, names of the participants, signature/adoption date (s), subject, participants and treaty registration number.

View the complete information on the treaty selected

You may click on the link "Bilateral", "Multilateral' or "Subsequent action" to have the system display the most complete information available for that specific treaty or subsequent treaty action. A link to the full text of a treaty is displayed in the right upper corner of the page pointing to the relevant image in the corresponding language in Tiff or PDF format. Please note that treaties subject to the Limited Publication policy of the UN Secretariat are identified as such online and do not have any textual component to be displayed. Also, subsequent treaty actions registered by the UN Secretariat after May 1998 are not displayed in UNTS format since a complete summary information is provided for each treaty action in the system.

View and print the complete text of the treaty in the selected language

When you click on any of the links pointing to the full text, the system would display the complete text available for that particular record in the language selected. The format could be TIFF or PDF.

To view texts in TIFF, click on the link "Download all Pages" which would activate the tiff imaging application installed on your PC or use the "Go to page" option. Texts in PDF are displayed in Adobe Acrobat viewer. You can also "ZOOM IN" or "ZOOM OUT" to make the page fit to your screen, if necessary.Saving, printing or copying to clipboard can be done as part of the viewing function of TIFF or PDF applications.