How can I find a Treaty?

The UN Treaty Collection website provides access to a wealth of information about international agreements, treaties, and conventions.

In the past, the UN published two important series:

• Status of Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General, and
• UN Treaty Series.

The website provides access to the information in both of these publications, as well as additional materials about UN practice in treaty matters, including:

• Glossary
• Treaty Handbook
• Final Clauses Handbook

Status of Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General (MTDSG)

The MTDSG section of the website follows the chapter structure of the original publication. 

• Chapters are organized by broad topic, within each chapter the treaties are listed in chronological order.
• Annexes or amendments immediately follow the original agreement.
• Declarations, reservations, and other notes are linked to the country name.
• Superscript numbers indicate a note in the Historical Information section.
• Search the INDEX by keywords in the title of the convention.
• Full text search is also available.
• Icons at the top of the treaty status page link to a PDF of the status, as well as to versions of the text of the treaty, including digital copies of the Certified True Copy (CTC).

For each treaty, information is available on:

• Ratification
• Accession
• Signature
• Texts of any declarations, reservations or objections

United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS)

The UN Treaty Series is a collection of treaties and international agreements, published since 1946, in accordance with Article 102 of the UN Charter.

• To be included, the treaties must be:
  • registered or filed and recorded with the Secretariat
  • in force
• The UNTS includes the texts of treaties in their authentic languages, with translations into English and French, as appropriate
• Both bilateral and multilateral agreements are found in the UNTS

The UNTS database contains the texts of all published volumes of the UNTS, plus the texts of treaties in volumes not yet published.

• Search by Title, Participant, or Full-text
  • Full-text is especially useful if the text searched is not English or French
• Advanced Search enables quite complex searching, including using Subject terms
• It is possible to export search results to Excel

League of Nations Treaty Series (LNTS)

The League of Nations Treaty Series is also available through the UN Treaty Collection website.  

• In general, it is best to use the Full-text Search and to be as specific as possible.
• The UNTS Cumulative Indexes include treaties in the League of Nations Treaty Series.