Government Information - United Nations and Other Organizations

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General Sources

United Nations: The "About the United Nations" link points to UN departments, its main constituent bodies, UN reform, the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, various landmark documents and resolutions and the Dag Hammarskjöld library. The 'Search' link at the bottom retrieves official UN documents and unofficial information by keyword. The "Site Index" link provides an alphabetical list of UN webpages that cover its departments, Secretary-Generals, publications, and political, social and economic issues involving the UN.
Official WEB Site Locator for the United Nations System of Organizations: Contains an alphabetic index of websites of organizations and agencies within the UN. Also includes websites of joint initiatives or special projects established to address specific areas of interest.
Structure and Organization of the United Nations: Points to the numerous entities within this vast organization. Note the links at the top right to the organizational chart and the UN system locator that links conveniently to affiliated agencies such as the FAO and WHO. Left margin includes links to the UN Charter, member states, documentary sources and frequently asked questions.

Legislation and Legal Sources

Electronic Information System for International Law: Links to the highest quality primary materials, authoritative web sites and helpful research guides to international law on the Internet.
International Court of Justice: Contains links to the basic documents and decisions of the prinicpal judicial organ of the UN.
NATLEX: A bibliographic database containing information about the labour laws of roughly 180 countries.
Global Legal Information Network (GLIN): A database of national laws from approximately 35 contributing countries and organizations that is accessed from a Web server of the U.S. Library of Congress. Provides searchable legal abstracts in English and some full texts of laws in the language of the contributing country.

Catalogue and Indexes

AccessUN (1991 - ): Indexes official records, sales publications, and UN Treaty Series citations. Includes selected full-text of several thousand UN documents.
UNBISNET - UN Bibliographic Information System (1979 - ): Catalogue of United Nations documentation and publications indexed by the UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library and the Library of the UN Office at Geneva. Also included are commercial publications and other non-UN sources. UNBISnet coverage is primarily from 1979 onward, however, more and more older documents are being added to the catalogue on a regular basis and provides access to a growing number of full text resources. Also includes voting records for the General Assembly from 1983 - present and the Security Council from 1946 - present. Indexes speeches for the General Assembly, Security Council and Economic and Social Council from 1983 - present. Speeches from the Trusteeship Council are indexed from 1982 - present.

Other important links under:
UN Documentation Research Guide
UN Documentation Centre
(found on left-hand side of the page under "Other UN Document Resources")
United Nations System Pathfinder: Identifies major publications of the UN and its constituent bodies. Titles are grouped under topics such as disarmament, environment, human rights, international law, economic and social development, and international security and peacekeeping. Where applicable, a link is provided to the publication's web version (either full text, summary, or extracts). Also includes some works published outside of the UN system.
LABORDOC: The catalogue of the International Labour Organization library is a rich database comprising roughly 350,000 references to the world's literature on labour related topics. These include industrial relations, labour law, employment, working conditions, vocational training, labour-related aspects of economics, social development, rural development, technological change, labour legislation, personnel management, social security, occupational safety and health, income distribution, employment and training policy, migrant workers, equal opportunity and other related subjects. Some 5,000 citations are added each year.

Statistics

Commodity Trade Statistics Database (COMTRADE): Comtrade provides commodity trade data for all available countries and areas since 1962. Currently, it contains almost 700 million records.
FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department - Statistics: Contains numerous links to large data sets as well as summary tables of fishery statistics.
FAOSTAT: An online, multilingual database from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Provides statistics on agriculture, nutrition, fisheries and forestry.
InfoNation: Provides a current, statistical overview of the geography, economy, population and social indicators of 185 countries.
Labour Force Surveys: Points to official labour force surveys from over 200 countries.
UNICEF - Information by Country: Contains brief tables of demographic and socio-economic indicators such as infant mortality, life expectancy, adult literacy, nutrition, health, education, economy, women, HIV/Aids and malaria.

Treaties

Environmental Treaties and Resource Indicators (ENTRI): Contains the complete texts of more than 169 environmental agreements.
Treaty Bodies Database (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights): Contains the text of compliance reports submitted by signatory countries to the various UN human rights committees that monitor the implementation of principal international human rights treaties. Concluding observations by the committees (e.g. Committee Against Torture, Committee on the Rights of the Child) and other related docments are included. The database may be searched by keyword or can also be browsed by country, treaty, reporting status or status of ratification. Documents may be in English, French or Spanish.

Publications - Full Text

Documents Online (1995- ): Provides access to the official documentation of the World Trade Organization, including the legal texts of the WTO agreements and selected material from 1986 - 1994, principally Uruguay Round documents.
NOTE: This database does not contain WTO publications (information products created and marketed to audiences outside of the organization).
European Court of Human Rights (Guide): Includes a searchable database (HUDOC) of the case-law of the European Convention on Human Rights and provides access to the full-text of decisions, judgments, and resolutions.
Official Documents of the United Nations (ODS): ODS covers all types of official United Nations documentation, beginning in 1993. Older UN documents are, however, added to the system on a daily basis. ODS also provides access to the resolutions of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council and the Trusteeship Council from 1946 onwards. The system does not contain press releases, UN sales publications, the United Nations Treaty Series or information brochures issued by the Department of Public Information.
Access ILO Databases: Provides links and brief accompanying descriptions of bibliographic and full text databases of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The latter includes ILOLEX whose web version contains the Constitution of the ILO, International Labour Conventions and Recommendations, and ratifications of International Labour Conventions by country.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develeopment: Provides access to the full text of OECD publications (policy briefs, case studies, forecasts and outlooks, reports, statistics) on over 200 countries. The site can be searched by country or topic.
UNHCR - Research/Evaluation: Previously known as "REFWORLD", this section of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees website contains evaluation reports of the organization's projects, programs, and policies (see the "Evaluation and Policy Analysis" link). The "Country of Origin" link points to UNHCR country profiles and the state of the world's refugees by country of asylum and origin; related websites such as the US Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and Amnesty Internationl Country Reports. The "Legal Information" link contains the full text of national legislation on refugees, nationality and human rights.
World Bank - Publications and Doucments: Provides access to the full text of many documents and publications; also indexes the official archival records of the World Bank.

Government Documents
Queen Elizabeth II Library

June 6, 2012