Legal Research

The United Nations has quietly eliminated all access fees for its online U.N. Treaty Series.

The U.N. Publications office offers this free access via a generic username and password:

Username: treaties

Password: 12345

To search the treaties, visit the United Nations Treaty Collection, select "Access to Databases"  (near the bottom of the page), then select "United Nations Treaty Series." Results include full text and exact page images.

[Thanks for the tip to U.N. research expert Wiltrud Harms of the U.C. Berkeley Law Library!]

[Update, January 30,2008]  Wiltrud Harms brings more news from the U.N. Treaty Section on the status of the online U.N. Treaty Series. The Treaty Section confirms that access is now free, but also writes:

But at the same time, we need to alert you to the fact that the website that you see will be abolished and replaced by a new website, which is currently under construction.

As the opening page of the current site mentions: the site was frozen per 15 November. This means that the status of the multilateral treaties has not been updated since. The Depositary Notifications have been added since then.

Stay tuned for further updates once the new U.N. treaty web site is up.