Guides to Government Information in the Library

Finding UN Speeches

Q: How do I find a speech in the UN?
A: Texts of speeches in the General Assembly back to the 52nd session (1997) are available from the General Assembly's web site. Click on "Sessions" at the top of the screen and then on "Meetings" when you are in the appropriate session.

A: Security Council speeches back to 1994 are available from the Security Council web page

A: Access UN provides access to full texts of both General Assembly and Security Council speeches

UN member states regularly make speeches in General Assembly meetings, committee meetings, and in the Security Council. UN speeches are a good way to determine the official stand of a country on an issue, as well as to look at international rhetorical style. Speeches from the General Assembly and the Security Council are located in the 3rd Floor, Old Stacks. They are also located in the UN microfiche collection.

Because the General Assembly is a large body and considers many issues, it allocates most questions to one of its main committees:

• First Committee - disarmament and related international security matters
• Second Committee - economic and financial matters
  
• Third Committee - social, humanitarian and cultural matters
  
• Fourth Committee - decolonization matters
  
• Fifth Committee - administrative and budgetary matters
  
• Sixth Committee - legal matters
  
• Special Political Committee
  

Indexes to Speeches

AccessUN (Available from UVA IP addresses or through a proxy server account.)
Access UN provides access to current and retrospective UN documents and publications. Coverage includes selected full-text verbatim and summary record documents from 1956 to the present. Full text of most resolutions and many recent speeches is linked to the citation. Government Information Resources (GIR) owns much of the material indexed in Access UN on microfiche. These are filed by Document Number in Maps/Microforms Room.

AccessUN indexes speeches from the General Assembly, its committees and the Security Council. Search by the name of an individual, by the country name (in the author box), or by subject. Documents with PV or SR in the Document Number are speeches.

UNBISnet-Speech Index (http://unbisnet.un.org/)
Provides citations to speeches given since 1983 in the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Economic and Social Council; and to speeches given in the Trusteeship Council since 1982.

UN Document Numbers

A/45/PV.43 - Verbatim record for a meeting of the entire UN General Assembly
A/42/C.4/SR.32 - Summary record (SR) for a meeting of the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly
A/44/234 - Report of some sort, not a meeting record
S/PV.2234 - Full text of a meeting of the UN Security Council

You need the document number in order to find the UN document.

Where to Find Speeches

For most speeches Alderman Library will have both a paper and a microfiche version.

Other types of preliminary records (letters etc.) are filed in the 3re floor Old Stacks. These mimeographed UN documents are filed by document number, e.g. A/46/876 or S/345. We keep UN mimeographed documents for 2 years until they are replaced by microfiche which are filed In the Maps/Microforms Room.

UN Documents on the WWW

Full texts of many important documents are available on the United Nations web site. However, very few speeches are available via the Web in full text.

A U.S. Government Printing Office Regional Depository Library