Free UN Sanctions Sanctions Check

The UN Consolidated Sanctions List is maintained by the UN Security Council and consolidates the names of every individual and entity designated under any of the active Security Council sanctions regimes. It is the closest thing the world has to a globally binding sanctions dataset — every UN member state has a Charter obligation to give effect to Security Council decisions.

The current regimes include counter-terrorism (the 1267 ISIL/Al-Qaida Sanctions List), the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (1718), Libya (1970), Somalia (751/1907), South Sudan (2206), Yemen (2140), Iran-related residual measures (2231), and several others. Each is administered by a Sanctions Committee composed of all 15 Security Council members.

Every other consolidated list — US, EU, UK, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore, Japan — incorporates UN designations. The UN list is the lowest common denominator of any sanctions screening programme. If a name is on the UN list, it will already be on every reputable national list as well, but the UN entry is the authoritative source of designation metadata for the underlying program.

Where the UN list matters most is in jurisdictions whose own regimes are thin. A bank operating in a country without a developed autonomous sanctions framework still has the UN list to work from, and most correspondent-banking relationships expect at least UN-list compliance as a precondition.

Around 800 individuals and 250 entities are currently designated under the active UN regimes. Entries include names, aliases, date and place of birth, nationalities, document numbers, and the resolution under which the designation was made. The 1267 list, the largest, also includes detailed narrative summaries explaining the basis for designation.

Less often than the major national lists. Designations require consensus or near-consensus in the relevant Sanctions Committee, which slows the pace. In a typical year there are several dozen modifications — additions, removals, and amendments — across all regimes combined.

This slower pace does not mean static. The Ombudsperson process for the 1267 list regularly results in delistings, and the Counter-Terrorism Committee periodically refreshes narrative summaries.

Because UN designations propagate through every national regime, your obligations on a UN hit are dictated by your home jurisdiction's implementation. In practice, the UN designation is your strongest signal — it is rare for a UN hit to be a false positive after the secondary identifiers are checked.

Block the assets, refuse the relationship, and report under your local rules. For UK persons that means OFSI; for EU persons, the relevant NCA; for US persons, OFAC. The substantive freeze obligation is the same across all of them, even where the procedural requirements differ on reporting deadlines and the form of notification.

One area where the UN list is uniquely useful: humanitarian operations. The Security Council has built carve-outs into many of its regimes — most notably resolution 2664, which created a standing humanitarian exemption across all UN sanctions regimes from December 2022. Tracking the underlying UN designation (rather than just the downstream national listing) makes it easier to identify when an exemption applies.