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2 days ago · World Health Organization, specialized agency of the United Nations established in 1948 to further international cooperation for improved public health conditions. Its tasks include epidemic control, quarantine measures, and drug standardization. Learn more about its history, agency structure, and priorities.
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Apr 23, 2024 · International organizations serve many diverse functions, including collecting information and monitoring trends (e.g., the World Meteorological Organization), delivering services and aid (e.g., the World Health Organization), and providing forums for bargaining (e.g., the European Union) and settling disputes (e.g., the World Trade ...
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For the full article, see World Health Organization . World Health Organization (WHO), Public-health agency of the UN, established in Geneva in 1948 to succeed two earlier agencies. Its mandate is to promote “the highest possible level of health” in all peoples. Its work falls into three categories.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was established in 1948 as a specialized agency of the United Nations to further international cooperation for improved health conditions. Its constitution defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
- Overview
- Types and purposes
- History
Also known as: international aid
Written byVictoria Williams
Victoria Williams
Associate Professor of Political Science, Alvernia College, Reading, Pa.; Independent Consultant on international affairs.
Fact-checked byThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Foreign aid can involve a transfer of financial resources or commodities (e.g., food or military equipment) or technical advice and training. The resources can take the form of grants or concessional credits (e.g., export credits). The most common type of foreign aid is official development assistance (ODA), which is assistance given to promote development and to combat poverty. The primary source of ODA—which for some countries represents only a small portion of their assistance—is bilateral grants from one country to another, though some of the aid is in the form of loans, and sometimes the aid is channeled through international organizations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). For example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have provided significant amounts of aid to countries and to NGOs involved in assistance activities.
Learn about a foreign aid program in Ethiopia, including the improvement of ensete processing and the establishment of an independent pharmaceutical industry.
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Countries often provide foreign aid to enhance their own security. Thus, economic assistance may be used to prevent friendly governments from falling under the influence of unfriendly ones or as payment for the right to establish or use military bases on foreign soil. Foreign aid also may be used to achieve a country’s diplomatic goals, enabling it to gain diplomatic recognition, to garner support for its positions in international organizations, or to increase its diplomats’ access to foreign officials. Other purposes of foreign aid include promoting a country’s exports (e.g., through programs that require the recipient country to use the aid to purchase the donor country’s agricultural products or manufactured goods) and spreading its language, culture, or religion. Countries also provide aid to relieve suffering caused by natural or man-made disasters such as famine, disease, and war, to promote economic development, to help establish or strengthen political institutions, and to address a variety of transnational problems including disease, terrorism and other crimes, and destruction of the environment. Because most foreign aid programs are designed to serve several of these purposes simultaneously, it is difficult to identify any one of them as most important.
The earliest form of foreign aid was military assistance designed to help warring parties that were in some way considered strategically important. Its use in the modern era began in the 18th century, when Prussia subsidized some of its allies. European powers in the 19th and 20th centuries provided large amounts of money to their colonies, typically to improve infrastructure with the ultimate goal of increasing the colony’s economic output. The structure and scope of foreign aid today can be traced to two major developments following World War II: (1) the implementation of the Marshall Plan, a U.S.-sponsored package to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries, and (2) the founding of significant international organizations, including the United Nations, IMF, and World Bank. These international organizations have played a major role in allocating international funds, determining the qualifications for the receipt of aid, and assessing the impact of foreign aid. Contemporary foreign aid is distinguished not only because it is sometimes humanitarian (with little or no self-interest by the donor country) but also by its size, amounting to trillions of dollars since the end of World War II, by the large number of governments providing it, and by the transparent nature of the transfers.
The level of foreign aid expenditures following World War II dwarfed prewar assistance. The postwar programs of the United Kingdom, France, and other European former colonial powers grew out of the assistance they had provided to their colonial possessions. More importantly, however, the United States and Soviet Union and their allies during the Cold War used foreign aid as a diplomatic tool to foster political alliances and strategic advantages; it was withheld to punish states that seemed too close to the other side. In addition to the Marshall Plan, in 1947 the United States provided assistance to Greece and Turkey to help those countries resist the spread of communism, and, following the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, communist-bloc countries donated increasing amounts of foreign aid to less-developed countries and to close allies as a means of gaining influence as well as promoting economic development.
Several non-European governments also implemented their own aid programs after World War II. For example, Japan developed an extensive foreign aid program—an outgrowth of its reparations payments made following the war—that provided assistance primarily to Asian countries. Much of Japan’s aid came through procurement from Japanese companies, which helped fuel economic development in Japan. By the late 20th century, Japan had become one of the world’s two leading donor countries, and its aid programs had extended to non-Asian countries, though much of the country’s assistance was still directed toward Asia.
Red Cross workers in Seoul preparing aid supply kits to be sent to North Korea after two trains carrying explosives and fuel collided in Ryongch'ŏn, North Korea, April 2004.
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
The vast majority of ODA comes from the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), specifically the nearly two dozen countries that make up the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). The DAC includes western European countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Other providers of significant assistance include Brazil, China, Iceland, India, Kuwait, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. In the 1970s the international community, through the United Nations, set 0.7 percent of a country’s gross national income (GNI) as the benchmark for foreign aid. However, only a small number of countries (Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden) reached that mark. Although the United States and Japan have been the world’s two largest donors, their levels of foreign aid have fallen significantly short of the UN’s goal.
Declaration of Helsinki, formal statement of ethical principles published by the World Medical Association (WMA) to guide the protection of human participants in medical research. The Declaration of Helsinki was adopted in 1964 by the 18th WMA General Assembly, at Helsinki.
1 day ago · The United Nations (UN) was the second multipurpose international organization established in the 20th century that was worldwide in scope and membership. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, was created by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and disbanded in 1946. Headquartered in New York City, the UN also has regional offices in Geneva ...
