Mission reports

United Nations fact-finding missions are United Nations missions intended to discover facts. They are often sent to troubled areas

Declaration on fact-finding missions

On 9 December 1991, the General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/46/59, "Declaration on Fact-finding by the United Nations in the Field of the Maintenance of International Peace and Security". The declaration on fact-finding:

  • defines and institutionalizes the use of fact-finding missions;
  • states that it is not only a tool to gather information, but also to signal concern over a potentially explosive situation. It should be used at the earliest possible stage to prevent disputes.
  • states that fact-finding should be "comprehensive, objective and impartial".
  • Fact-finding missions may be undertaken by the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Secretary-General, with the consent of the "receiving State".

Find Mission Reports

The Security Council authorizes fact-finding missions to conflict areas, in order to investigate the situations and evaluate UN activities. In their reports they also make recommendations for further actions. Reports of the missions are issued as Mission Reports.

UN documents and publications in catalogues and databases

  • United Nations Digital Library offers UN documents and open access publications, UN voting data and speeches, UN maps, Content in 6+ languages. Replaces the traditional online catalogue UNBISnet.
  • UN iLibrary UN publications online covering different topics.
  • ODS full-text UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
  • Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
  • UNBIS Thesaurus a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
  • Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
    • a list of all documents
    • a comprehensive subject index
    • an index to speeches
    • a voting chart of resolutions
  • United Nations Documents Index (United Nations Digital Library) References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, and the Libraries at UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva.
UN Documents available online
Last modified: 2023-11-23