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.
Industry: Logistics
