Global Institutions & Groupings — Glossary

Afghanistan is a landlocked South-Central Asian state, currently governed de facto by the Taliban (Islamic Emirate) since August 2021, lacking universal international recognition.

The Agreement on Agriculture is a WTO treaty, effective 1995, that disciplines agricultural subsidies and market access across its three pillars.

The Amber Box is the WTO category covering all domestic agricultural subsidies that distort trade and are therefore subject to reduction commitments.

The Appellate Body is the standing seven-member tribunal of the World Trade Organization that hears appeals on points of law from panel rulings in trade disputes.

A Board of Governors is the supreme plenary organ of an international financial or technical institution, composed of one governor per member state, holding ultimate decision-making authority.

Bretton Woods refers to the 1944 conference and resulting monetary system that fixed exchange rates to the gold-convertible US dollar and created the IMF and World Bank.

BRIC is the acronym coined in 2001 for the four major emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India and China—that later formalised cooperation, adding South Africa in 2010 to become BRICS.

CEDAW is the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, a legally binding treaty defining and prohibiting sex-based discrimination.

The Charter of the United Nations is the founding treaty of the UN, signed in 1945, establishing its organs, purposes, principles, and binding obligations on member states.

Charter-based bodies are UN human rights organs established directly by the United Nations Charter or by resolutions of its principal organs, deriving authority from membership rather than treaty ratification.

The Common Framework for Debt Treatments is a G20 and Paris Club mechanism, agreed in November 2020, to coordinate sovereign-debt restructuring for the world's poorest countries.

Comparison is the analytical method of systematically juxtaposing two or more cases, institutions, or processes to identify similarities, differences, and causal patterns.

Consent is the voluntary expression of a State's or person's agreement to be bound by an obligation, the absence of which generally vitiates legal validity.

The Contingent Reserve Arrangement is a US$100 billion BRICS currency-swap framework, signed in 2014, that provides member central banks short-term liquidity support against balance-of-payments pressures.

Dhaka is the capital and largest city of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, serving as the seat of national government and the country's administrative, commercial, and diplomatic centre.

DSU Article 25 is the provision of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding that authorises expeditious arbitration as an alternative means of resolving disputes by mutual agreement of the parties.

The Enabling Clause is a 1979 GATT decision that permits developed countries to grant preferential, non-reciprocal trade treatment to developing countries as a permanent exception to the most-favoured-nation rule.

An Executive Board is the resident decision-making body of an international organisation that conducts day-to-day operations and policy between sessions of its plenary assembly.

The G20 Leaders' Summit is the annual meeting of heads of state and government of the world's 20 major economies to coordinate global economic and financial policy.

GATT Article I enshrines the most-favoured-nation principle, requiring every WTO member to extend any trade advantage granted to one member unconditionally to all other members.

GATT Article III is the national treatment obligation requiring that imported goods, once across the border, be treated no less favourably than like domestic products in internal taxation and regulation.

GATT Article XXIV is the provision permitting WTO members to form customs unions and free-trade areas as exceptions to the most-favoured-nation obligation.

Geneva is the Swiss city that serves as the principal European headquarters of the United Nations and the hub of multilateral diplomacy, humanitarian law, and global health governance.

In international relations, interests are the material and ideational ends—such as security, wealth, and prestige—that states and other actors pursue through foreign policy.

International affairs is the study and conduct of political, economic, legal, and security relations among states and other actors across national boundaries.

The Johannesburg summit of August 2023 was the 15th BRICS summit, hosted by South Africa, which approved the bloc's first expansion since 2010 by inviting six new members.

Kathmandu is the capital and largest city of Nepal, seat of its federal government and the headquarters of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

The Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement is a plurilateral mechanism allowing participating WTO members to appeal panel rulings to binding arbitration while the Appellate Body remains paralysed.

Negative consensus is a decision rule under which a proposal is adopted automatically unless every member, including its proponent, agrees by consensus to reject it.

Neighbourhood First is India's foreign-policy doctrine prioritising deepened political, economic, security and connectivity ties with its immediate South Asian neighbours.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a 1968 multilateral treaty that seeks to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote disarmament, and enable peaceful nuclear cooperation.

A plurilateral agreement is a treaty among a limited subset of a wider organisation's members, binding only its signatories rather than the entire membership.

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) is a strategic forum of the United States, India, Japan, and Australia coordinating on a free and open Indo-Pacific.

The Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) is the permanent counter-terrorism organ of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, headquartered in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is a free-trade agreement among fifteen Asia-Pacific states that entered into force on 1 January 2022, forming the world's largest trading bloc.

UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 (1971) recognised the People's Republic of China as the sole legal representative of China at the United Nations and expelled the Republic of China (Taiwan).

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is an eight-member intergovernmental organisation, founded in 1985, that promotes economic and regional integration in South Asia.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, passed in 1974, declared Ahmadis to be non-Muslims for the purposes of the Constitution and law.

The Shanghai Five was a 1996–2001 grouping of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan formed to settle border disputes and build regional security cooperation.

South Africa's 2010 accession to the BRIC grouping transformed it into BRICS, adding the bloc's first African member at China's invitation.

The South Asian Free Trade Area is a SAARC-administered trade pact, signed in 2004 and effective 2006, that progressively eliminates tariffs among eight South Asian member states.

"Treaty of Paris" denotes several distinct peace treaties signed in Paris, most notably the 1783 treaty ending the American Revolutionary War and recognising US independence.

Uniting for Consensus is a bloc of states, led by Italy and Pakistan, that opposes the addition of new permanent members to the UN Security Council.

The Uruguay Round was the eighth and most ambitious round of multilateral trade negotiations under the GATT, running from 1986 to 1994 and creating the WTO.