ORGANIZATIONS OF UN

  • The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an international organisation that oversees those financial institutions and regulations that act at the international level. The IMF has 189 member countries (as on 12 April 2016) but they do not enjoy an equal say. The G-7 members US (16.52%), Japan (6.15%), Germany (5.32%), France (4.03%), UK (4.03%), Italy (3.02%) and Canada (2.22%) have 41.29% of the votes. China (6.09%), India (2.64%), Russia (2.59%) Brazil (2.22%) and Saudi Arabia (2.02%) are the other major members.
  • The World Bank was created during the Second World War in 1944. Its activities are focused on the developing countries. It works for human development (education, health), agriculture and rural development (irrigation, rural services), environmental protection (pollution reduction, establishing and enforcing regulations), infrastructure (roads, urban regeneration, electricity) and governance (anti-corruption, development of legal institutions). It provides loans and grants to the member-countries. In this way, it exercises enormous influence on the economic policies of developing countries. It is often criticised for setting the economic agenda of the poorer nations, attaching stringent conditions to its loans and forcing free market reforms.
  • The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is an international organisation which sets the rules for global trade. This organisation was set up in 1995 as the successor to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) created after the Second World War. It has 164 members (as on 29 July 2016). All decisions are taken unanimously but the major economic powers such as the US, EU and Japan have managed to use the WTO to frame rules of trade to advance their own interests. The developing countries often complain of non-transparent procedures and WTO being pushed around by big powers.
  • The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established in 1957. It came into being to implement US President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” proposal. It seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to prevent its use for military purposes. IAEA teams regularly inspect nuclear facilities all over the world to ensure that civilian IAEA reactors are not being used for military purposes
  • Amnesty International is an NGO that campaigns for the protection of human rights all over the world. It promotes respect for all the human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It believes that human rights are interdependent and indivisible. It prepares and publishes reports on human rights. Governments are not always happy with these reports since a major focus of Amnesty is the misconduct of government authorities. Nevertheless, these reports play an important role AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL in research and advocacy on human rights.
  • Human Rights Watch is another international NGO involved in research and advocacy on human rights. It is the largest international human rights organisation in the US. It draws the global media’s attention to human rights abuses. It helped in building international coalitions like the campaigns to ban landmines, to stop the use of child soldiers and to establish the International Criminal Court.