World Organizations

G-7

The Group of Seven: its members are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. It has no organizational structure. Primarily a forum for discussing economic problems, its most frequent meetings are of finance ministers. When the G-7 holds formal summit meetings (heads of government), Russia is invited and these sessions are therefore known as G-8 summits and branch out into political issues as well.

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
19 members:

Belgium	France*	Iceland	Netherlands
Spain	Britain	Canada	United States
Germany	Italy	Norway	Turkey
Denmark	Greece	Luxembourg	Portugal
Poland	Hungary	Czech Republic

* France withdrew from the integrated military structure in 1966, but remains a member of the Atlantic Alliance.
Website: http://www.nato.int/

OPEC

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
11 members:

Algeria	Iraq	Qatar	Iran
Indonesia	Kuwait	Saudi Arabia	Venezuela
Nigeria	Libya	United Arab Emirates

Website: http://www.opec.org/

OSCE

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (formerly Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe). Membership of more than 50 countries from Europe, the former Soviet republics and North America.
Website: http://www.osce.org/

OIC

Organization of the Islamic Conference. Nearly all the world's Moslem countries are members (we do not call it the "Islamic Conference Organization").

WTO

World Trade Organization (successor to General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). Most of the world's trading nations are members.
Website: http://www.wto.org/

War Crimes Tribunal

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Set up by the U.N. Security Council in 1993 to prosecute and try war criminals in The Hague. So far we have avoided the abbreviation "ICTY". Not to be confused with the International Court of Justice, a separate institution.
Website: http://www.un.org/icty/

E.U.

European Union (with periods)
Website: http://europa.eu.int/index-en.htm
Not to be confused with the Council of Europe (http://www.coe.fr).
Note that Javier Solana's formal title is: high representative for common foreign and security policy.

Notes

Union of the Arab Maghreb
Members: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania.

East African Cooperation Secretariat
We do not call it "Commission for East African Cooperation".

Some international organizations such as NATO and the ILO (International Labour Organisation) use "s" instead of "z" in their name.
See The Europa World Year Book for the correct spelling. If you do not have this, try an online finding aid such as The CIA World Factbook or the The Political Reference Almanac

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