World Treaty Index (WTI) is a new database that aspires to contain every known international agreement of the 20th century by January 2011 -- over 85,000 treaties!  At the moment there are about 53,000 agreements.

This new database will eventually allow the user to calculate histograms on the fly, perform combination searches (by topic, country, etc), merge with other datasets (using the Correlates of War codes), and download all or part of the data in a .csv file.

I just did a search for treaties between Argentina and Uruguay and got 63 results between 1945-1990 with citation information where available (this is not a full-text database). The results tell me what type of treaty (bilateral or multilateral), the date of the treaty, the topic, and the title in English.  What a resource!

Both the website and topic codes build upon the work of Peter Rohn from the University of Washington who conducted the original WTI collection process in the 1960's and 1970's.

Here is the direct URL to the database:

http://worldtreatyindex.com/

Feel free to email the creators of this database with any problems and/or suggestions.

Today is the anniversary of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.  You can see an image of the Treaty on the National Archives website.

Per the National Archives, "the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought an official end to the Mexican-American War (1846–48), was signed on February 2, 1848, at Guadalupe Hidalgo, a city to which the Mexican government had fled with the advance of U.S. forces.  Signed on February 2, 1848, this treaty ended the war between the United States and Mexico.  By its terms, Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory, including parts of present-day Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah, to the United States."  In sum, Mexico ceded 525,000 square miles (55% of its pre-war territory, not including Texas) to the United States in exchange for $15 million ($313 million in 2006 dollars).

The library has several items specific to the treaty including:

• The Treaty of Guadalupe: A Legacy of Conflict (1990)
  
• The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: 1848-1948 (1948)
  
• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Message of the President of the United States, transmitting a communication from the Secretary of State, and accompanying papers, in compliance with resolutions of the House of Representatives, of the 5th Instant, relative to the Treat of Peace concluded at Guadalupe Hidalgoon the 2d of February, 1848 (1848)

The Library of Congress has assigned a subject heading for material related to this treaty: Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 1848. 

Yale's Avalon Project also has the full-text of the treaty.

U.S. Treaties prior to 1950, such as the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (9 Stat. 922), were published in the Statutes at Large.  Volume 64, Part 3, contains an Index of all treaties ratified by the United States prior to 1950. 

Treaties to which the U.S. is a party are now published in United States Treaties and other International Agreements.

http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/~walters/web%20103/map%20guadalupe%20hidalgo.gif

The just-released Treaties in Force 2009 publication by the U.S. Department of State will tell you what bilateral and mulitlateral treaties to which the United States is a party are currently in force.  This is an annual publication also available in print and on HeinOnline (subscription database available to Yale community only).

Treaty research can be complicated so there are plenty of research guides and databases to help with your research.  You will find them on our Foreign and International Research Resources page.

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies has released a new easy-to-use treaty index: FIT, the Flare Index to Treaties.

FIT is searchable by any one or a combination of the following:

• keywords drawn from the official, popular and alternative titles which have been used for each treaty
• additional keywords relevant to the subject matter or organisations associated with the treaty
• the date on which the treaty was concluded
• the place where the treaty was concluded

For example, a free-text search for "genocide" will redirect you to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.  When you click on the Convention, you'll discover that the treaty was concluded on 9/12/1958 in New York, and is published at 78 UNTS 277 (and many other places).  There are also several links that will take you to the full-text of the convention.

For more resources related to treaty research, including a drafting history (travaux preparatoires) research guide and an annotated list of databases, see the Yale Foreign and International Resources page.

 The Library of Congress has launched a series of multinational, comparative legal studies on the rights of children.  

"Children’s Rights examines sixteen nations, across five continents: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, Iran, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Nicaragua, Russia, and the United Kingdom (England and Wales). For each nation, the study focuses on the domestic laws and policies that affect child health and social welfare, education and special needs, child labor and exploitation, sale and trafficking of children, and juvenile justice. Children’s Rights also lists which pertinent international treaties the nation has ratified and implemented."

The reports, as well as an overview (providing a summary of relevant global and regional legal instruments, including human-rights related instruments and international agreements on child protection and placement), are available in both html and pdf format, with footnotes and hyperlinks.  The overview and the country reports, as they become available, can be accessed from the project's main page.

Two new congressional publications of interest to to those researching in treaties and international agreements:

1. Senate print (S. prt. 106-71) "Treaties and other international agreements: the role of the U.S.Senate" .

2. CRS Report (RL 33865/2008) "Arms Control and Nonproliferation: a Catalog of Treaties and agreements"

Source: [Int-Law] listserv