Informal UN/LOCODE Consultation

The “United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations” (UN/LOCODE) is an international standard to identify locations uniquely and unambiguously. It is widely used in the trade community and other areas, such as sustainable fishery, maritime security and environmental protection.

UN/LOCODE is managed and maintained by UNECE with the support of the UN/LOCODE Advisory Group.  It is the product of a wide collaboration in the framework of joint trade facilitation efforts undertaken by the United Nations, other international organizations, governmental bodies and the business community.

Aiming at a better service to the UN/LOCODE user community and the sustainable development of UN/LOCODE, the UNECE secretariat strives to meet growing demands with limited resources.

• In 2015, the UN/LOCODE Focal Point Network was set up to improve data quality through support from governmental authorities.
• In 2017, the UN/LOCODE Advisory Group was set up to advise the Secretariat in the development of the standard and to provide a platform for all interested stakeholders to contribute to the further use and the promotion of the standard.
• In 2018, the Advisory Group recommended the development of a new UN/LOCODE maintenance and publication system to support the new workflow of the maintenance team including the UN/LOCODE Focal Point Network.
• In 2019, the development of the new system through the UN/LOCODE Re-engineering Project was kicked off.
• In 2020, the use of UN/LOCODE for the Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA) by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was discussed.

The important issues, follow-up and development related to UN/LOCODE arising since the fourth annual meeting will be discussed:

• Cooperation with the FAO secretariat on the use of UN/LOCODE for Global Record to combat Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing.
• Liaison with the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) and the UN Global Platform.
• Country code used for Northern Ireland after Brexit in UN/LOCODE.
• UN/LOCODE maintenance team to validate Data Maintenance Requests (DMRs).
• Launch of a Task Force to deal with the policy of the UN/LOCODE maintenance in line with the revised Recommendation 16.
• New UN/LOCODE system developed through the UN/LOCODE Re-engineering Project, which supports Application Programming Interface (API) to exchange real-time data with other business systems.

Target Audience

The UN/LOCODE Advisory Group members including representatives of the UN/LOCODE user community, UN/LOCODE Focal Points, and UN/CEFACT experts;  and the nternational Organizations.

Programme of the Consultation - UN/LOCODE/2021/1

Item 1. Introduction of experts

Item 2. Report from the Secretariat
   UN/LOCODE/2021/INF.2
   Presentation - Report on UN/LOCODE

Item 3. New development and follow-ups
   UN/LOCODE/2021/INF.3 - Joint paper on Global Record
   Presentation by:
   Use of UN/LOCODE for Global Record (Giuliano Carrara, FAO)
   AIS on the UN Global Platform (Markie Muryawan, UN/DESA)
   Liaison report from UNGEGN

Item 4. Code for Northern Ireland in UN/LOCODE
   UN/LOCODE/2021/INF.4
   Presentation - Note on code for Northern Ireland in UN/LOCODE

Item 5. UN/LOCODE maintenance
  UN/LOCODE/2021/INF.5 - ToR for the Task Force
  Presentation by:
  Updates by the Maintenance Team (Bertrand Geoffray, Co-convenor)
 Terms of Reference (ToRs) of the Task Force on Facilitation and Improvement of the UN/LOCODE Maintenance (Markus Pikart, UNECE)
 UN/LOCODE National Focal Point for Brazil (Tiago Splender)

Item 6. UN/LOCODE Re-engineering Project
  Presentation by:
  Report from the project team (Yan Zhang, UNECE)
  Web services for data exchange of UN/LOCODE (Jiajun Shen, IMO)

Item 7. Discussion of a draft Programme of Work for 2022-2023
    UN/LOCODE/2021/INF.6 - Draft Programme of Work for 2022-2023

Item 8. Future work

Item 9. Other business

Item 10. Adoption of recommendations