About UN Documents

Statements made during UN meetings may be issued as documents called meeting records. There are two types of meeting records:

Verbatim record

• full, first-person account of the meeting
• symbol includes PV.--

Verbatim Record (S/PV.6826, 30 August 2012)

Summary record

• third-person condensed version of the meeting
• symbol includes SR.--

Summary Record (A/C.4/66/SR.10, 8 Feb. 2012)

Meeting records are not issued for all UN meetings. Principal organs and selected subsidiaries may have either verbatim or summary records, but not both.

If a body is not entitled to meeting record coverage, information about the meetings may be found in:

• press releases, if issued, and
• sessional or annual reports.

Press releases are available online. 

The Index to Speeches, both online and in print, provides citation to speeches and full text links when available, for:

• General Assembly beginning with its 38th session (1983)
• Security Council beginning with its 19th year (1964) 
• Economic and Social Council beginning in 1946 (ECOSOC speech index completed in 2022)
• Trusteeship Council beginning with its 15th special session (1982)

A brief presentation about the parts of a meeting record and the types of information found within meeting records. A Security Council meeting record is used as the sample document.