The latest edition of this weighty annual (which has grown by 10 per cent since the 2010 volume) provides information, corrected to June 2013, on 2,600 international organizations at varying levels of detail, according to their importance or complexity. It is divided into five parts of markedly unequal length. Part 1 provides some general articles giving a short historical account of the development of international organizations; a chronology from 1863 to 2013; and assessments of the present situation of international organizations in, respectively, the fields of security, economic development, humanitarian co-operation, environmental policy and criminal justice. It makes a distinction between intergovernmental organizations and international non-governmental organizations (though a few admit members of both varieties.) The former category would include the best-known and most important bodies (for instance the United Nations [UN] or the European Union [EU]) but the latter are more numerous.
Part 2, comprising nearly one-third of the book, is devoted to the United Nations and its numerous subordinate bodies and agencies. The UN itself is covered in a hundred pages, which provide, among other information, the addresses of its offices throughout the world and of the national delegations to it; a list of its principal officials, even the more obscure (for example, the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative on the Border Controversy between Guyana and Venezuela); extensive lists of the significant resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council; and full texts of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Another hundred pages are devoted to subordinate bodies (for instance, the UN Children’s Fund) providing contact details, lists of their publications, and substantial accounts of their activities (usually since about 1990). A recent addition to that section is the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, established in 2010. A sub-section of comparable length describes in a similar style the UN Agencies, such as the International Atomic Energy Authority. It is of interest that a few of these, such as the Universal Postal Union, actually existed long before the UN did.
Part 3, even longer than Part 2, describes 57 of the most important non-UN organizations. Some of them (e.g. the Bank for International Settlements) operate on a world scale, but the majority are regional, e.g. the Arab League. It may be noted that at least a dozen are organizations for economic and political co-operation which aspire (with varying degrees of success) to emulate the European Union. The length of entries ranges from 70 pages on the EU to two on the World Council of Churches. Even the shorter entries provide contact details; an outline of the organization’s history, aims and activities; a list of members (only if these are states); a note on its budget; a list of its publications; and short descriptions of any subordinate bodies. The longer entries provide a much more detailed narratives of the recent activities of each body, and sometimes print the text of its founding treaty, or at least a summary. In the case of the EU, contact details are given for all major officials.
Part 4 provides short entries, with contact details and a brief summary of aims and activities, for more than 2,000 lesser organizations, listed in 23 categories, such as education or trade and industry. A random selection may indicate their variety: the World Ploughing Organization; the Gulf of Guinea Commission; the International Federation of Film Critics; the International Commission on Large Dams; and the South Pacific Tourism Organization.
Part 5 is a Who’s Who of International Organizations featuring 200 important personalities, mostly heads of organizations, with contact details and information on their careers and present positions. The Index covers only the names of organizations; a more comprehensive one would no doubt have been impracticably long.
Most users of such a reference book will need to consult only a small part of it, but anyone studying the book as a whole must be struck by the degree to which it constitutes a catalogue of the world’s woes. The majority of the major international organizations appear to spend their time attempting to deal with serious crises, the number of which never diminishes. These may be political, military, economic, environmental, medical or caused by a combination of several factors. Consider, for example, the sheer weight of human misery implied in the simple statistic that 10 of the 200 countries of the world require more than half of all its available humanitarian aid. Scattered throughout the book, too, are many individual accounts demonstrating the intractable nature of these problems. There will continue to be much for international organizations to do, and thus a justification for regular updates of this fact-filled volume.
