Intergovernmental organization

Intergovernmental vs International Organizations

Intergovernmental organizations are institutions of public international law whose members are sovereign States and other IGOs. Intergovernmental organizations are sometimes called International organizations, an expression which is less specific.

Legal nature

Legally speaking, an intergovernmental organization may be established by a constituent document such as a charter, a treaty or a convention, which when signed by the founding members, provides the IGO with international legal personality. Intergovernmental organizations so established are subjects of international law, capable of entering into agreements among themselves or with States. Thus, intergovernmental organizations in a legal sense should be distinguished from mere groupings of states, such as the G-8 and the G-77. Such groups or associations have not been founded by a constituent document and exist only as task groups. However, in non-legal contexts, these are sometimes referred erroneously as international or intergovernmental organizations.

Intergovernmental organizations must also be distinguished from treaties. Many treaties (e.g., the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or, in the 1947-1995 period, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)) do not establish an organization and rely purely on the parties for their administration becoming legally recognised as an ad hoc commission. Other treaties have established an administrative Secretariat which was not deemed to have be granted international legal personality.

Membership and function

Intergovernmental organizations differ in function, membership and membership criteria. Membership of some organizations (global organizations) is open to all the nations of the world as far as they comply with membership criteria and after approval by a general assembly or similar body. This category includes the United Nations and its specialised agencies, as well as the World Trade Organization. Other organizations are only open to members from a particular region or continent of the world, such as the European Union, African Union, ASEAN and other regional organizations.

Finally, some organizations base their membership on other criteria: cultural or historical links (the Commonwealth of Nations, La Francophonie, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Latin Union), level of economic development or type of economy (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC), or religion (Organisation of the Islamic Conference).

The Union of International Associations publishes an annual directory of organizations and provides ancillary information on most international organizations, both intergovernmental and non-governmental.

Historical Development of International Organisations

International organizations developed mainly from the need of nations and governments to have a neutral forum where to debate and consider matters of importance to more than one particular nation. However, some IGOs also developed from the need of an either executive or enforcement body which could carry on multinational interests in a unified form.

Among the first IGOs were the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, initiated in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, and the future International Telecommunications Union, which was founded by the signing of the International Telegraph Convention by twenty countries in May 1865.

In the nineteenth century, France showed interest in the creation of many other intergovernmental organizations (such as those which maintain the Système international d'unités (metric system))^{[citation needed]}.

Purpose of Intergovernmental Organizations

Intergovernmental organizations describe and define their purpose in their charter or other document of creation. These organizations exist with diverse aims, including but not limited to increase international relations, promote education, health care, economic development, environmental protection, human rights, humanitarian efforts, inter-cultural approach and conflict resolution.