Practice World organisations - general awareness mcq Online Quiz (set-2) For All Competitive Exams

There are 193 members of the United Nations General Assembly. Established in 1945 under the Charter of the United Nations, the General Assembly occupies a central position as the chief deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations.

Special Drawing Rights (SDR) are supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The SDR was created by the IMF in 1969 to support the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), earlier known as the World Wildlife Fund, was founded on April 29, 1961. It is the world's largest conservation organization, working in the field of the biodiversity conservation, and the reduction of humanity's footprint on the environment. It is headquartered in Vaud, Switzerland.

The United Nations Organisation (UNO) is an intergovernmental organization established on 24 October 1945 to promote international cooperation. It was founded to replace the League of Nations following World War II and to prevent another conflict.

There are 15 members of the Security Council. There are also 10 non-permanent members, with five elected each year to serve two-year terms. This basic structure is set out in Chapter V of the UN Charter.

The current non-permanent members are Colombia, India, Germany, Portugal, South Africa, Azerbaijan, Guatemala, Morocco, Pakistan, and Togo.

The headquarters of INTERPOL are located in Lyons. INTERPOL was established in 1923 with headquarters in Paris. After a terrorist bomb blast in May 1986, the headquarters were shifted to Lyons.

The Charter of the United Nations, its 1945 constituent document, did not expressly provide for official languages of the UN. The Charter was enacted in five languages (Chinese, French, Russian, English, and Spanish). Arabic was an official language and working language of the General Assembly in 1973.

Supachai Panitchpakdi is the Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Prior to this, he was the Director-General of the World Trade Organization from September 1, 2002, to September 1, 2005.

He was succeeded by Pascal Lamy. In September 1999 he was elected to become Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), sharing the post with competitor Mike Moore when a decision could not be reached. Taking the second half of the six-year term, he entered office on September 1, 2002.

In March 2005 he was appointed to become the Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) following his term at the WTO, a post he took up in late 2005.

Note: The current Director-General of WTO is Roberto Azevedo of Brazil, since 1 September 2013. Headquarters of WTO: Geneva, Switzerland.

The headquarters of the United Nations is a complex in New York City. The complex has served as the official headquarters of the United Nations since its completion in 1952. It is located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan (New York).

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programs. It is one of four institutions created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944.

Both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are headquartered in Washington D.C.

Trygve Lie, a Norwegian politician, served as the first Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1946 to 1952.

His election as the UN Secretary-General was a result of a compromise between the major powers. As Secretary-General, Lie supported the foundations of Israel and Indonesia.

In June 2002, the Mahabodhi Temple became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, specifically nominated for the international World heritage program. The Mahabodhi Temple Complex is one of the four holy sites related to the life of the Lord Buddha, and particularly to the attainment of Enlightenment.

The first temple was built by Emperor Asoka in the 3rd century B.C., and the present temple dates from the 5th or 6th centuries. It is one of the earliest Buddhist temples built entirely in brick, still standing in India, from the late Gupta period.

Note: There are 35 (27 cultural, 7 natural and 1 mixed) World Heritage Sites in India that are recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as of July 2016.

Three new sites – “Archaeological Site of Nalanda Mahavihara (Nalanda University)” at Nalanda, Bihar, “Capitol Building Complex – The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier” in Chandigarh and “Khangchendzonga National Park, Sikkim” has been added to the list in July 2016.

East Timor (the world’s youngest country, formally joined the world body Friday after centuries of Portuguese rule and years of often brutal Indonesian occupation. An Australian-led international peacekeeping force, INTERFET, was sent (with Indonesian permission) until order was restored.

The administration of East Timor was taken over by the UN through the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) in October 1999.

The INTERFET deployment ended in February 2000 with the transfer of military command to the UN. East Timorese independence was formalised on May 20, 2002, with Xanana Gusmao sworn in as the country’s first President. East Timor became a member of the UN on September 27, 2002.

Note: On 14 July 2011 – The General Assembly admitted the Republic of South Sudan as the 193rd member of the United Nations. Montenegro became the 192nd UN Member State on 28 June 2006, just weeks after it gained its independence from Serbia.

The UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science is an international distinction created by UNESCO in 1951 following a donation from Mr Bijoyanand Patnaik, Founder and President of the Kalinga Foundation Trust in India. In 2010, Gokulananda Mohapatra of India received this prize.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957.

Though established independently of the United Nations through its own international treaty, the IAEA Statute, the IAEA reports to both the UN General Assembly and Security Council. The IAEA has its headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

The IAEA has two “Regional Safeguards Offices” which are located in Toronto, Canada, and in Tokyo, Japan. The IAEA also has two liaison offices which are located in New York City, United States, and in Geneva, Switzerland.

In addition, the IAEA has three laboratories located in Vienna and Seibersdorf, Austria, and Monaco.

The 5 veto-wielding permanent members in the United Nations Security Council are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

The Millennium Development Goals set time-bound targets, by which progress in reducing income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter and exclusion — while promoting gender equality, health, education and environmental sustainability — can be measured.

They also embody basic human rights — the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter and security.

The goals are ambitious but feasible and, together with the comprehensive United Nations development agenda, set the course for the world’s efforts to alleviate extreme poverty by 2015.

The International Court of Justice, which is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations, is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Its main functions are to settle legal disputes submitted to it by states and to provide advisory opinions on legal questions submitted to it by duly authorized international organs, agencies, and the UN General Assembly.

India has witnessed many changes as a result of globalisation and liberalisation especially during the last decade of the second millennium. We have less than 1 per cent share of world trade against more than 16% of the world population. At the time of independence, it was higher at about 2% though it was forced to export more than its imports in order to meet the unilateral transfers.

In 1950, the Indian share in the total world trade was 1.78%, which came down to 0.6% in 1995. According to the Economic Survey 2002-03, this percentage share of 0.6% continued in years 1997 and 1998.

In 1999 this share has increased to 0.7% which clearly indicates that India has failed to increase its share in the total world trade.

The Security Council is made up of 15 member states, consisting of 5 permanent members–

1. China,
2. France,
3. Russia,
4. the United Kingdom and
5. the United States–and

10 non-permanent members, currently

1. Azerbaijan,
2. India,
3. South Africa,
4. Colombia,
5. Morocco,
6. Togo,
7. Germany,
8. Pakistan,
9. Guatemala, and
10. Portugal.

The UN was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of Nations, to stop wars between countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue. It contains multiple subsidiary organizations to carry out its missions.

The United Nations Headquarters resides in international territory in New York City, with further main offices at Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna.

The organization is financed from assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states and has six official languages:

1. Arabic,
2. Chinese,
3. English,
4. French,
5. Russian, and
6. Spanish.