An international organization is typically the managing body behind a set of systems, norms, rules, regulations,

infrastructural elements, and or standards that sprawl across more than one government,

which is why they're often also called intergovernmental organizations,

because they exist within and between the nations they span.

The United Nations is a very large

intergovernmental organization, or maybe a collection of intergovernmental organizations that exist

within a larger umbrella intergovernmental organization that manages all the smaller ones.

And so are the European and African unions, the League of Arab

States, the Commonwealth, the World Customs Organization, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis

and Malaria, the Indian Ocean Commission, the International Solar Alliance, the New Development

Bank, the Pacific Islands Forum, the International Committee of the Red Cross,

the International Olympic Committee, and the Regional Center of Small Arms and Light

Weapons in the Great Lakes region, the Horn of Africa, and bordering. So there are a lot of

different groups that fit into this category and a lot of different focuses that each group specializes in,

which is why they're developed and deployed in the first place.

These groups are meant to allow governments to work together in various ways and to do so

via means that aren't always possible or desirable using other mechanisms, like alliances or treaties.

International organizations can also allow government entities or external entities to contribute to causes while relinquishing some control

over and responsibility for how those causes are tackled by providing resources and power

to third-party entities that exist outside

government control. This isn't always the case, as some organizations are pretty firmly in the

pocket of one nation's government or another, but the idea is that this setup allows for the

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