UN General Assembly

This body is where representatives of all states sit together in a huge room, listen to speeches, and pass resolutions. This body coordinates a variety of development programs and other autonomous agencies through the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

UN Security Council

In this body five great powers and ten rotating member states make decisions about international peace and security. It dispatches peacekeeping forces to trouble spots.

UN Secretariat

The administration of the UN takes place through this branch, led by the secretary-general of the UN.

Peacebuilding

UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

Many poor countries depend on export revenues to finance economic development, making them vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices and other international trade problems. This body negotiates international trade agreements to stabilize commodity prices and promote development. Because countries of the global South do not have much power in the international economy, however, this body has little leverage to promote their interests in trade.

World Health Organization (WHO)

In the area of health care, this Geneva-based organization provides technical assistance to improve conditions and conduct major immunization campaigns in poor countries.

World Court

As international law has developed, a general world framework in which states can pursue grievances against each other has begun to take shape. The rudiments of such a system now exist in this body (formally called the International Court of Justice), although its jurisdicition is limited and its caseload light.

Immigration law

When people cross a border into a new country, the decision about whether they can remain there, and under what conditions, is up to the new state. The state of origin cannot compel their return. National laws establish conditions for foreigners to travel and visit on a state's territory, to work there, and sometimes become citizens.

Diplomatic recognition

Diplomatic immunity

Alone among all foreign nationals, diplomats are beyond enforcement of the host country's national courts. If they commit crimes, from jaywalking to murder, they may be shielded from arrest. All the host country can do is take away a diplomat's accreditation and expel the person from the host country.

Human rights

The rights of human beings against certain abuses of their own governments.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

Amnesty International

This is an NGO that operates globally to monitor and try to rectify glaring abuses of human rights. This organization has a reputation for impartiality and has criticized abuses in many countries, including the United States.

Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

This norm holds that governments worldwide must act to save civilians from genocide or crimes against humanity perpetrated or allowed by their own governments.

War crimes

These are large-scale abuses of human rights that often occur during war. In wartime, international law is especially difficult to enforce, but extensive norms of legal conduct in war as well as international treaties are widely followed.

Crimes against humanity

These are inhuman acts and persecutions against civilians on a vast scale in the pursuit of unjust ends.

International Criminal Court (ICC)

Following up on the UN tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, in 1998 most of the world's states signed a treaty o create a permanent court. This court hears cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity from anywhere in the world. America has refused to ratify the agreement creating this court.

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

This committee provides practical support––such as medical care, food, and letters from home–– to civilians caught in wars and to POWs. Exchanges of POWs are usually negotiated through this committee. Armed forces must respect the neutrality of this committee, and usually do so.

Balance of trade

This commercial principle is the value of a state's imports relative to its exports. A state that exports more than it importa has a trade surplus.

Comparative advantage

The overall success of liberal economics is due to the substantial gains that can be realized through trade. The gains result from this commercial principle that different states enjoy in producing different goods (a concept pioneered by economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo 200 years ago). States differ in their abilities to produce certain goods because of differences in natural resources, labor force characteristics, technology, and other such factors.

Autarky

One obvious way to avoid becoming dependent on other states, especially for a weak state whose trading partners would tend to be more powerful, is to avoid trading and instead to try to produce everything it needs by itself.

Protectionism

Although few states pursue strategies of autarky, many states try to manipulate international trade to strengthen one or more domestic industries and shelter them from world markets.

World Trade Organization (WTO)

This organization is a global, multilateral IGO that promotes, monitors, and adjudicates international trade. Together with the regional and bilateral arrangements described shortly, this organization shapes the overall expectations and practices of states regarding international trade.

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)

This treaty was created in 1947 to facilitate freer trade on a multilateral basis. This treaty was more of a negotiating framework than an administrative institution. It did not actually regulate trade.

Most-favored nation (MFN)

This is a concept, which says that trade restrictions imposed by a WTO member on its most-favored trading partner must be applied equally to all WTO members. If Australia applies a 20 percent tariff on auto parts imported from France, it must not apply a 40 percent tariff on auto parts imported from the United States.

Generalized System of Preferences (GSP)

An exception to the MFN system is this system, dating from the 1970s, by which rich states give trade concessions to poor ones to help their economic development.

Centrally planned economy

In this type of economy, political authorities set prices and decide on quotas for production and consumption of each commodity according to a long-term plan, and international trade occurs at government-controlled prices.

Transitional economies

These are economies that are now shifting from the former Soviet centrally-planned economies to market-based economies connected to the world capitalist economies.

Multinational corporations (MNCs)

Foreign direct investment

Unlike portfolio investment (on paper), this type of investment involves tangible goods such as factories and office buildings (including ownership of a sizable fraction of a company's stock, as opposed to a portfolio with little bits of many companies).

Millenium Development Goals

In UN in 2000 adopted these goals, which set targets for basic needs measures to be achieved by 2015 and measured against 1990 data. The first of the eight goals is to cut in half the proportion of the world's population living in "extreme poverty," defined as income of less than $1 per day (in 1990 dollars, or about $1.25 today).

Infant mortality rate

This rate is the proportion of babies who die within their first year. This rate is an excellent indicator of overall health because it reflects a population's access to nutrition, water, shelter, and health care.