World Esperanto Association - Structure and Affiliated Organizations

Structure and Affiliated Organizations

According to its 1980 statutes (Statuto de UEA), the World Esperanto Association has two kinds of members:

• individual members join the association directly, paying a fee to the Rotterdam headquarters or to the chief delegate in their country. These members receive the UEA Yearbook and receive the UEA services.
• asociaj membroj, those members of the organizations that joined UEA. These members are administered by their respective organizations. It can be a national or a specialist organization. This kind of membership is for the person in question a mere symbolical membership.

The highest organ of UEA, the Komitato, has members (komitatanoj) elected in three different ways:

• An organization sends one komitatano for every 1,000 national members to the Komitato, but at least one. Most national organizations have only one komitatano.
• Per 1,000 individual members, the individual members can choose one member to the Komitato.
• Both previous groups by-elect more komitatanoj, up to one third of their numbers.

The Komitato elects a board, the Estraro. The Estraro installs a general director and sometimes additionally a director. The general director and his staff work at the UEA headquarters, Oficejo de UEA, in Rotterdam.

An individual member can become a delegito, a 'delegate'. This means that he serves as a local contact person for Esperanto and UEA members in his town. A ĉefdelegito (chief delegate) is someone installed also by the UEA headquarters, but with the task to collect the member fees in a given country.