UN/CEFACT is the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, the intergovernmental body responsible for UN/EDIFACT and for the modern semantic models — the Buy-Ship-Pay reference model, the Multi-Modal Transport reference data model, and the code lists — that underpin cross-border trade digitalization.
UN/CEFACT
UN/CEFACT, hosted by the UN Economic Commission for Europe, is the intergovernmental home of cross-border trade data standards. It is best known as the custodian of UN/EDIFACT, and its more recent work is the semantic layer that customs authorities and single-window programs build on.
- Buy-Ship-Pay reference model - The canonical decomposition of an international trade transaction into its commercial, logistics and financial legs.
- Multi-Modal Transport Reference Data Model - Shared semantics across road, rail, air, sea and inland waterway.
- Code lists - Location codes (UN/LOCODE), package types, transport modes and units of measure that everything else references.
- Cross-Industry Invoice - The semantic model behind several national e-invoicing regimes.
UN/CEFACT’s output is a vocabulary rather than an interface, and that is the right way to read it. It does not publish endpoints and does not intend to; what it publishes is the agreed meaning that a customs filing, an EDI message and a modern REST payload can all be mapped onto. For anyone building trade APIs that will eventually meet a government system, its code lists are the part that saves the most rework.
Referenced in API Evangelist papers
This standard shows up in my published research. These reports read the machine-readable evidence provider by provider — and put this standard in the context of a real sector.
The State of Supply Chain APIs
The UN body behind EDIFACT and the modern trade-data models that sit underneath cross-border digitalization programs.
