International and Intergovernmental Organizations

Organizations bringing together states, or in one case the political parties of many states, to coordinate policy, security, finance or humanitarian action across national borders, chiefly a nineteenth and twentieth century institutional form. Belongs here: the League of Nations and its successor the United Nations and its specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization, the Bretton Woods institutions (the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank), military and economic alliances (NATO, the Warsaw Pact, OPEC), the humanitarian International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Communist International as an international coordinating body of Communist parties. Does not belong here: a single state's own national institution, filed under National and Cultural Institutions, and a private trading or financial enterprise, filed under Chartered Trading Companies and Leagues or Banking and Financial Houses.