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( International organization)
An international organization is, by definition, any organization with international membership, scope, or presence. However, in common usage, the term is usually reserved for intergovernmental organizations (IGO) such as the U.N., the Council of Europe, or the World Trade Organization, with sovereign states or other IGOs as members. Their scope and aims are most usually in the public interest but may also have been created with a specific purpose. While many non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a generalising term used for privately created organizations with international scope, certainly have international presence and aims, it is in the sense of IGOs that the term "international organization" is used in the remainder of this article. NGOs tend to relate more to global issues on individual levels rather than state problems on systemic levels. Legally speaking, an international organization may be established by a constituent document such as a charter, a treaty or a Convention, which when signed by the founding members, provides the IGO with legal recognition. International organizations so established are subjects of international law, capable of entering into agreements among themselves or with states. Thus international organizations in a legal sense are distinguished from mere groupings of states, such as the G-8 and the G-77, neither of which have been founded by a constituent document and exist only as task groups, though in non-legal contexts these are sometimes referred erroneously as international organizations. International organizations must also be distinguished from treaties. Many treaties (e.g., the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or, in the 1947-1995 period, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)) do not establish an international organization and rely purely on the parties for their administration becoming legally recognised as an ad hoc commission.
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