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Why It Matters

The State Department is failing to keep Congress and the American public informed about international agreements and commitments on a timely basis, according to a GAO report published June 23.

Nearly one-third of the 311 agreements and instruments the department reported to Congress between October 2023 and March 2025 were reported late. One agreement concluded on November 4, 2024, was not reported until the end of March 2025, about five months after its conclusion. The department also missed the statutory 120-day deadline to publish these agreements publicly about half the time.

Congress is entitled to timely notice of international commitments so it can evaluate whether they align with U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. The law requires two rounds of reporting for each agreement or instrument: once after it is signed or finalized, and again after it enters into force, each time with legal authority information. When either report arrives late or not at all, lawmakers cannot exercise oversight before commitments become operative.

The publishing failures compound the problem. When the State Department misses the 120-day public posting deadline, citizens cannot access information about what their government has agreed to do. Late-reported agreements and instruments were on average 2.3 reporting cycles late, meaning some sat unreported through multiple congressional reporting windows.

The State Department also does not collect legal authority information from the agencies and offices that negotiate instruments, even though it is required to report that information to Congress. Without it, reporting is incomplete regardless of timeliness.

Broader Context

Congress mandated this GAO review through a provision in the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2023. That same law amended the Case-Zablocki Act, expanding its transparency requirements effective September 19, 2023. For the first time, qualifying nonbinding instruments, which are commitments that do not legally bind the United States, must generally be reported to Congress and made available to the public. Previously, reporting and publishing requirements applied only to formally binding international agreements.

The expansion matters because nonbinding instruments had been a potential gap in oversight. By covering them, Congress closed a category of commitments that could otherwise avoid disclosure. GAO examined the State Department's implementation of these requirements across the October 2023 to March 2025 period, interviewing officials from State and six other agencies about late reporting.

The Bottom Line

GAO made seven recommendations, all directed to the Secretary of State to implement through the Office of the Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs. They cover tracking submission timeliness, periodically assessing and improving that timeliness, updating submission templates to capture legal authority information, establishing a noncompliance reporting mechanism, requiring agencies to periodically confirm they have submitted all applicable agreements, creating written standard operating procedures for the 120-day publishing deadline, and optimizing the department's webpages for searchability across countries, agencies, and subjects.

State concurred with five recommendations and did not concur with two. GAO stated it continues to believe all seven are warranted. Until the department addresses the systemic gaps in tracking, collection, and publication, the amended Case-Zablocki Act's expanded transparency requirements will remain inconsistently enforced.

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