Background
The original UN CEFACT “Global Trust Registry Project” project brief1 produced in early 2025 defined objectives for the project that would deliver value, even as a stand-alone initiative. However, the need for the project was realised through earlier work performed under another UN/CEFACT project, the UN Transparency Protocol (UNTP2) specification project that is developing a specification for supply chain transparency at scale.
As with all UN CEFACT projects, both of these projects aim to positively impact and support the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The catalyst for the creation of the UNTP project was a need to combat “greenwashing” (false claims about SDG / ESG / green credentials) in global supply chains. The concern being that greenwashing will cause a “race to the bottom”, where false and true claims cannot be distinguished and organisations who do the right thing receive no recognition or reward for their investments.
Transparency isn’t just about SDGs. The ability to enable supply chain transparency and verify upstream claims is a major benefit for trustworthiness in ALL global trade. Not only can this support verification of SDG related claims, it can also support other compliance proofs, including proofs associated with tariff inclusion or exclusion.
The UNTP project is a supporting instrument of Recommendation No. 49: "Transparency at Scale - Fostering Sustainable Value Chains”, and commenced as a UNECE project in 2023.
Recommendation No. 49 was approved in the July 2026 UN/CEFACT plenary and can be found here: https://unece.org/trade/documents/2025/07/session-documents/revised-recommendation-no-49-transparency-scale-fostering
Recommendation 49 provides recommendations and guidelines to countries for supply chain transparency and includes, as a “supporting instrument”, the “United Nations Transparency Protocol” (UNTP).
About UNTP
The UN Transparency Protocol (UNTP) specification project has been running in parallel to the drafting of Recommendation 49. In the two years that the project has been running to date, 26 contributors from around the world have provided content and the project has attracted a large number of observers as well as UN/CEFACT expert contributors.
The UNTP content is managed within a UNICC hosted GitLab environment, here: https://opensource.unicc.org/un/unece/uncefact/spec-untp
Recognising the significant technology investments already made by supply chain participants, UNTP promotes a protocol not platform approach to supply chain interoperability. The specification defines a minimal core set of verifiable credential definitions for the core protocol, and an extensions methodology to enable sectors to define extensions that meet their specific needs. Sectors representing something over a third of the global GDP are already represented.
The UNTP specification defines a “Digital Identity Anchor” as one of the key building blocks for supply chain transparency at scale. These DIA credentials identify participants and other subjects of supply chain interactions such as the issuers of conformity credentials and the authorities that register organisations, transportation, and other supply chain assets.
The UNTP specification states that the originating authorities of registration, the nation-state registrars of these elements, should be the source of these identifiers.
Many nation state registers have yet to make their registries easily accessible online, and very few (possibly none) are able to issue verifiable credentials to those who have been registered and wish to prove their registration to others.
Recognising this gap, the UN/CEFACT “Global Trust Registry” project was proposed in early 2025 and approved in April with a call for action issued on LinkedIn in April of 2025.