The Union of International Associations is a non-profit non-governmental organization researching, under UN mandate, the global civil society and publishing information on international organizations, international meetings, world problems, etc. Headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium. It was founded in 1907 by Henri La Fontaine, the 1913 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Paul Otlet, a founding father of what is now called information science.
Its stated goals (taken from its website) include:
- Contribution to a universal order based on principles of human dignity, solidarity of peoples and freedom of communication;
- Facilitation of the development and efficiency of non-governmental networks in every field of human activity, especially non-profit and voluntary associations, considered to be essential components of contemporary society;
- Collection, research and dissemination of information on international bodies, both governmental and non-governmental, their interrelationships, their meetings, and problems and strategies they are dealing with;
- Experimentation with more meaningful and action-oriented ways of presenting such information to enable these initiatives to develop and counterbalance each other creatively, and as a catalyst for the emergence of new forms of associative activity and transnational co-operation;
- Promotion of research on the legal, administrative and other problems common to these international associations, especially in their contacts with governmental bodies.
Famous quotes containing the words union of, union and/or associations:
“Union of Religious Sentiments begets a surprising confidence and Ecclesiastical Establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the Execution of Mischievous Projects.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“If the Union is now dissolved it does not prove that the experiment of popular government is a failure.... But the experiment of uniting free states and slaveholding states in one nation is, perhaps, a failure.... There probably is an “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. It may as well be admitted, and our new relations may as be formed with that as an admitted fact.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free- floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader’s full attention.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)