INTERPOL’s Red Notice is often treated as the gold standard of INTERPOL’s alerts. Yet behind the red banner lies a broader, more nuanced system of international notices and diffusions that deserves far more legal scrutiny than it currently receives.
With over 10,000 Red Notices issued annually, this mechanism has become INTERPOL’s flagship tool. But it is far from the only one. INTERPOL operates a spectrum of colour-coded notices, each with distinct objectives and implications:
🔴 Red Notice: To request the location and provisional arrest of a wanted person for the purpose of extradition.
🔵 Blue Notice: To gather information on a person’s identity, location or activities in relation to a crime.
🟢 Green Notice: To warn about a person whose criminal activity poses a potential threat to public safety.
🟡 Yellow Notice: To locate missing persons, especially minors, or to identify individuals unable to identify themselves.
⚫ Black Notice: To seek information on unidentified deceased persons.
🟠 Orange Notice: To warn of an imminent threat to persons or property from events, objects or individuals.
🟣 Purple Notice: To exchange information on criminal modi operandi, concealment methods or devices.
⚪ Silver Notice (pilot phase): To identify and trace criminal assets.
🔵⚪ INTERPOL–UNSC Special Notice: To inform members of individuals or entities subject to UN Security Council sanctions, particularly under counter-terrorism regimes.
Before any of the above notices can be published on INTERPOL’s secure platform (I-24/7), it must undergo a legal and operational compliance review by the General Secretariat. The General Secretariat may refuse to publish a notice if:
- The request lacks a valid national arrest warrant or court order.
- It violates Article 3 of INTERPOL’s Constitution, which prohibits the Organisation from engaging in activities of a political, military, religious, or racial nature.
- The data fails to meet the standards outlined in the Rules on the Processing of Data (RPD) – including proportionality, accuracy, clarity, and legality.
- The subject has been granted refugee status, in which case INTERPOL applies its 2015 refugee policy, generally barring the publication of notices against recognised refugees.
Alongside notices, INTERPOL also issues diffusions, international alerts with a similar purpose but circulated directly between selected countries, often without prior review by the General Secretariat. Despite their informal nature, diffusions are stored in INTERPOL’s databases and can have comparable operational consequences, including arrests, border alerts, and/or travel bans.
Three key facts about INTERPOL notices and diffusions:
- The Red Notice remains INTERPOL’s most intrusive and high-profile alert, often resulting in arrests, detentions, and extraditions. However, its prominence should not overshadow the significant legal consequences of other notices.
- Blue, Green, and even Yellow Notices, though framed as less severe, can still result in serious restrictions, such as surveillance, interrogation, refusal of entry, or expulsion.
- All notices and diffusions, irrespective of their classification, are subject to legal challenge if they breach INTERPOL’s legal framework or infringe upon fundamental rights protected under instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
