SANCTIONS LISTS AND WATCHLISTS EXPLAINED · GUIDEUPDATED 2026-09-04
Sanctions Lists and Watchlists Explained
An Interpol Red Notice is a request, not a sanction, and most are never public
A Red Notice is an arrest request on a national warrant, not a warrant itself: what the public extract holds, how diffusions differ, what a hit means.
Absence from Interpol's public Red Notice extract proves nothing, because most Red Notices are never published. A Red Notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action, issued by Interpol's General Secretariat at the request of a member country's National Central Bureau, or of the International Criminal Court or an international tribunal. The legal basis is a national arrest warrant or court order; Interpol issues no warrant of its own, and its constitution forbids it from acting in matters of a political, military, religious or racial character. Most notices are restricted to law enforcement. Only extracts published at the requesting country's request appear on the public website, where the public's help may be needed to find someone or where they may pose a threat to public safety. For a compliance team that makes a Red Notice a risk signal to review, never an automatic block.
What this workflow covers
SCOPE- Interpol's own fact sheet defines a Red Notice as a request to seek the location and arrest of a person wanted by a legal jurisdiction or an international tribunal with a view to extradition, and states plainly that it is an international alert, not an arrest warrant
- Legal basis: a national arrest warrant or court order; many member countries treat a Red Notice as a valid request for provisional arrest, and it is an official transmission channel under several extradition treaties, including the European Convention on Extradition
- A Notices and Diffusions Task Force of lawyers, police officers and operational specialists reviews every Red Notice request for compliance with Interpol's Constitution and Rules before publication
- Two blocks of information per notice: identity details (physical description, photograph, fingerprints, identity document numbers) and judicial information (the offence charged, the laws under which the charge is made, references to the arrest warrant or sentence)
- Diffusions are circulated directly by a member country's National Central Bureau to the countries of its choice, recorded in Interpol's databases and never published, so no screening tool can see them
- Nine notice colours: Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Black, Orange, Purple, Silver (in pilot) and the Interpol–United Nations Security Council Special Notice, which flags a party subject to UN sanctions
- The public extract is a small and non-representative slice of what is in circulation, published only at the requesting country's request
- Public search at interpol.int/How-we-work/Notices/Red-Notices/View-Red-Notices and a public JSON endpoint at https://ws-public.interpol.int/notices/v1/red with a detail endpoint per notice; automated clients are not promised access and can be refused at the edge
- Not a sanction, not a conviction, not a finding of guilt and not a prohibition on dealing; notices have been contested and cancelled, and Interpol's compliance and review mechanisms exist for that reason
- False positives: transliterated names from many scripts, often with a year-only date of birth, and stale mirrors that keep matching people already arrested or whose notice has been cancelled
Key statistics
DATA- Notice types published by Interpol
- 9, including the UN Security Council Special Notice and the Silver Notice pilot
- INTERPOL International Notices system fact sheet, COM/FS/2025-02/GI-02
- Legal basis for a Red Notice
- A national arrest warrant or court order — Interpol issues no warrant
- INTERPOL International Notices system fact sheet
- Public availability
- Extracts published only at the requesting country's request
- INTERPOL, View Red Notices
Compliance glossary
TERMS- Red Notice
- A request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action, issued by Interpol's General Secretariat on the basis of a national arrest warrant or court order.
- Diffusion
- An alert issued for the same purposes as a notice but circulated directly by a member country's National Central Bureau to the countries of its choice. Diffusions are recorded in Interpol's databases and are not published publicly.
- National Central Bureau (NCB)
- The national police unit in each Interpol member country that connects it to the Interpol network. Notices are issued at an NCB's request, and leads about a wanted person are routed back to it.
- Public extract
- The reduced version of a notice published on Interpol's public website at the requesting country's request, where the public's help may be needed or where the person may pose a threat to public safety.
- UN Special Notice
- The INTERPOL–United Nations Security Council Special Notice, created in 2005, informing members that an individual or entity is subject to UN sanctions such as an asset freeze, travel ban or arms embargo.
Authoritative references
SOURCES- 01About Red Notices
INTERPOL
- 02
- 03
- 04
- 05Compliance and review of notices
INTERPOL
Frequently asked questions
Q&A- Is a Red Notice the same as an arrest warrant?
- No. Interpol states that a Red Notice is an international alert for a wanted person but is not an arrest warrant; the warrant is national, issued by a country's judicial authorities, and the notice rests on it. Many member countries do treat a Red Notice as a valid request for provisional arrest, which is a different thing from a warrant.
- Can we check Red Notices without paying Interpol?
- Yes, the public extract is free to search on interpol.int and a public JSON endpoint exists. What no fee will buy you is the whole picture: the majority of Red Notices are restricted to law enforcement use, and diffusions circulated directly between National Central Bureaus are never published at all.
- How many Red Notices are in force?
- Interpol does not publish a running total of valid Red Notices on the pages we can verify, and the public search page's counter is rendered dynamically. Any specific figure quoted elsewhere should be traced to an Interpol publication with a date before you rely on it. What is documented is that the public extract is a subset, published at the requesting country's request.
- Our screening flagged a Red Notice. What does that actually mean?
- That the person you are screening resembles someone whose extract Interpol has published at a member country's request. It is a risk signal for review, not a legal prohibition. Confirm identity against the notice's identifiers, escalate to compliance, document the decision, and do not present it alongside sanctions hits as though it carried the same legal effect.
- What is the difference between a notice and a diffusion?
- A notice is issued by Interpol's General Secretariat after a compliance review and circulated to all member countries. A diffusion is sent directly by a member country's National Central Bureau to the countries it chooses, for the same purposes, and is recorded in Interpol's databases. Diffusions are not published, so they cannot be screened.
- Can a Red Notice be challenged or cancelled?
- Yes. Interpol operates compliance and review mechanisms, including a Commission for the Control of Interpol's Files through which an individual can request access to or deletion of data held about them. Notices are also cancelled when the person is arrested, extradited or surrendered, which is why a screening record should carry the date it was checked.
- Should a Red Notice hit block a customer automatically?
- No. It is an arrest request, not a sanction, and Interpol's constitution forbids notices of a political, military, religious or racial character precisely because the mechanism can be misused. The defensible handling is escalation, identity confirmation, a documented decision, and a record of what the source said on the day it was checked.
- Interpol's endpoint refused our request. Is that a 'no match'?
- No, it is a lookup error, and it should be recorded as one. ScreenVeritAI treats Interpol Red Notices as a live lookup rather than a mirrored bulk list: the source is queried per check instead of copied, /coverage states the current status, and the Quick Check stores what the lookup returned as a point-in-time evidence PDF. A failed lookup reported as 'no match' is the one outcome that cannot be defended later.
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