goTravel – UN Countering Terrorist Travel Software
goTravel is a United Nations owned software platform that enables Member States to prevent, detect, and investigate terrorist and serious crime travel by leveraging Advance Passenger Information (API) and Passenger Name Record (PNR) data. It is developed and maintained by the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) and the Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) as part of the Countering Terrorist Travel Programme.
The solution is deployed within national data centers and is not operated as a UN‑hosted cloud service, ensuring that each Member State retains full ownership and control over its passenger data. goTravel serves as a single window for receiving multiple industry-standard data formats such as PNRGOV EDIFACT, PNRGOV XML, and UN/EDIFACT PAXLST, over secure protocols.
Core analytical capabilities include configurable risk‑based rules, watchlist matching, and integration with Interpol databases to assess passengers before arrival or departure and automatically flag those who may require further scrutiny. Analysts can also manually query API and PNR records, visualize relationships in graph form, and use network analysis to uncover links and patterns that were previously unknown, generating intelligence packages for law‑enforcement authorities.un
Built on Microsoft .NET and open‑source components such as Angular, Elasticsearch, Keycloak, and relational databases (e.g., MariaDB, Postgres), goTravel is scalable to handle millions of records per year and is gradually extending from air travel to maritime, rail, and road passenger traffic.
