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The Mandate Review Registry is a work in progress. It currently represents our best efforts to create a searchable registry in an extremely limited time period. If you come across any errors, please notify us by clicking on the 'Contact Us' link in the top right corner of the main page to access the dedicated Mandate Review Registry phone and email hotlines.

Instructions and tutorial

I. Layout of the Registry

The registry can be accessed by all delegations, the wider UN family and the public from the Renewing the UN link from the main UN webpage as well as by entering the Mandate Review website directly at www.un.org/mandatereview. Click on Search Registry to enter.

On the left hand side of the page is a menu with various search capabilities: the first search function is the basic search function. As many searches conducted will probably not go beyond this basic search, the basic search function is the default each time a new search is begun.

On the upper right hand side of the page, there is a link to Frequently Asked Questions, which provides answers to many definitional questions that users may have. In addition, there is a Contact Us link that enables the user to directly contact the Mandate Review help desk. Both email and phone hotlines have been created.

II. Basic Search Function

The basic search function allows the user to search by four basic criteria: by Organ, Mandate Status, Issue Area, and Keyword.

Organ:The user may search for mandates from the General Assembly, the Security Council, or the Economic and Social Council

Mandate Status: the Summit Outcome Document requests that the review be undertaken of mandates "older than five years." Since consultations in the General Assembly over the past few months were inconclusive on how to interpret this phrase, the following mandates have been included, categorized and visually color-coded:

Those mandates originally adopted within the last 5 years (category "c") have been included for reference so that the user may see, if so desired, the totality of mandates to enable a more thorough and complete analysis.

Issue Area: the nine issue areas are the thematic clusters of the work of the UN and have been directly derived from Agenda of the 59th session of the General Assembly (A/59/251).

Keyword: the keyword search will provide results when you use a part of a word or exact phrases (one or the other) that appear in an agenda item, in a resolution title, resolution symbol or number, and in the mandating text. It does allow for the "stemming" of words (e.g. typing "Mala" will retrieve all mandates on Malaria, etc.)

III. Example of a Basic Search

For example, if the user wishes to look at the active or potentially active mandates of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council in the issue area of "drug Control, crime prevention and combating international terrorism," the following search could be performed:

First, choose the Organ and Status fields. Please note that these two fields are compulsory - they both need to be selected to conduct a search and the user has the option to select one or multiple choices. Now choose the issue area Drug Control, crime prevention and combating international terrorism. The keyword search can be left blank.

After choosing the necessary parameters, the click Go in the corner of the screen, or simply press [Enter] on the keyboard to see the search results.

IV. Search Results Page

After pressing Go, the Search Results Page appears. Here is a list of all mandates that match the criteria selected in the search. The user can see the color coding of the mandate status, as described above. In this case, all active mandates from the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council that fall under the issue area "drug control, crime prevention, and combating international terrorism" appear. These search criteria are displayed at the top of the Search Results Page for reference. In the top corner is listed the total number of records of mandates, displayed over a number of pages, that meet these particular criteria.

The relevant mandates are arranged in a table view. At the top are the various column headings that outline the type of information listed in this view: which organ the mandate came from, which resolution, the Agenda item and first 50 words of the mandating text, what function the mandate serves, the date of adoption, and whether or not it is a recurrent mandate.

A few basic tools can be used from this table view. The user can sort the results by any of the column headers, except for function, by clicking on the column header. For example, the user can sort mandates by their date of adoption by clicking on the column header Date of adoption. Clicking once displays the mandates in chronological order from oldest to newest. Clicking again displays them from newest to oldest. Similarly, if the user wishes to gather all mandates of the same agenda item, he or she simply needs to click on the column header Agenda item and mandate.

Note that there are various options for printing the records of mandates. From the Search Results Page, the user can choose to print either the summary table of mandates from that search, or the complete mandate details of all results for that search. In order to print the details of a single mandate only, the user can go to the Mandate Details Page and print from there.

It should be remembered, however, that the registry is a "living" tool, and that it may be updated within the coming weeks as the Secretariat receives feedback. As such, it is recommended that the on-line registry interface be used whenever possible to ensure access to the most up-to-date information.

V. Viewing the details of a specific mandate

By clicking on the View details link of the first mandate, the user is taken to the Mandate Details Page. Here more specific information is shown about the mandate. Again at the top of the page the search parameters are listed. The user can print details of individual records if desired.

In the main screen, first are listed various types of information regarding the resolution the mandate came from and the date of adoption, as well as the agenda item. For mandates that have been renewed, information has been included on the originating resolution as well as the latest renewing resolution. Depending on whether the mandate being viewed is the original or the renewing one, one of these fields will be filled in.

Below this, the full mandating text is listed, followed by the function(s) of the mandate. For convenience and to make the function parameter as effective as possible, efforts were made to limit to three the maximum amount of functions that a mandate is associated with.

Next is the Geographic scope, which is the region, country, or grouping that is explicitly and directly affected by the mandate. Below this is the Implementing entity, which lists the UN department or other entities responsible for the mandate’s implementation. Note that in the advanced search function, the user has the ability to search by geographic scope or implementing entity too, as well as by function, session, and agenda item.

At the bottom the user can see whether the mandate is constitutive, and whether it is recurrent. A constitutive mandate establishes a new Secretariat or intergovernmental body, mechanism or process, or changes the terms of reference of an existing body, mechanism or process. A recurrent mandate is a mandate that calls for recurrent action (e.g. reporting to the General Assembly annually, biannually, every three months, etc) or on a continuous basis (e.g. tracking or supporting a peace process of a situation but with no end date stated).

The user can scroll to the next mandate by clicking the arrow in the upper right corner, or skip to the mandate of choice by pressing the Back to results button and choosing a different mandate.

VI. Advanced Search Functions

In order to use the advanced search function, first go back to the search page by clicking the New Search icon. From here, pick the same organs and status as before. The user will notice that as he or she continues to choose different search parameters, the specifications show up on the lower left side of the page.

Specify function type: here the user will see a list of the various functions by which mandates are categorized in the registry. Any number of these can be chosen at a time. If two functions are chosen, the registry will retrieve all mandates of either of those two functions. If a function is not specified, the registry will retrieve mandates of all functions. This same logic applies to the other choices within the basic and advanced search parameters.

Specify Geographic scope: here are displayed various options of regions, economic groupings, and countries and areas. The user can choose any number of combinations of geographic scopes. Note that the regional grouping (e.g. Africa) is not an aggregation of the country groupings (e.g. countries in Africa) but will only search for mandates where such groupings are specifically mentioned.

Specify implementing entity: the implementing entities are divided into subcategories, as laid out in the UN System Chart, and listed in alphabetical order. Note that if more general implementing entities - such as United Nations, UN Funds and Programmes, or Specialized Agencies - are selected, only mandates that specifically mention those general entities will be retrieved. Again, general implementing entities are not an aggregation of more specific implementing entities.

Specify Session: here the user can further refine the search by the sessions of any of the organs chosen in the Organ search parameter.

Specify agenda item: note that this search page will only show the agenda items relevant to the previous choices made. If the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council were the chosen organs, then a list of agenda items for all issue areas for both the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council would be displayed. If, for example, the Security Council was chosen as well, its agenda items would be displayed here too. Note also that if only the issue area Maintenance of international peace and security was chosen, then agenda items falling under that issue area only would be displayed.

Note: The only search parameters that must be chosen are Organ and Status. Other basic and advanced search parameters only further refine the search, they do not broaden it. For example, if the user leaves the issue area search blank, the registry will retrieve mandates of all issue areas.