help International Organizations

Andalla · March 2, 2020

For the longest time now, among the most overlooked issues plaguing our RP universe is globalization. Simply put—we are acting like non-globalized countries in a globalized world. Just take a look at countries' interactions with each other. Of course, we do have an amazing active community, but there's just so much more to Eurth than just those who are active. Our current situation is described very well by our Featured Nation January 2020 dispatch, which deviates a bit from the usual and instead features the entire region. Here it is:

"The Region of Eurth is a massive, socially clumsy community, notable for its absence of moral laws and spontaneously combusting puppets. The laid-back, apathetic population of 100-ish players live in a state of perpetual fear, as a complete breakdown of social order has led to the rise of order through biker gangs."

One can tell that excerpt was written with a humorous tone, intending to parody the default NS nation description. But it does shed light on the reality that Eurth isn't globalized enough. To this day, we have yet to fully agree on an international language, international currency, etc. There are some generally-accepted standards, but I'm afraid to say we're not enforcing them enough.

Hold on—before you leave. The solution for this problem is, in fact, very easy.

It may be as simple as having several international organizations to help standardize things, at least to an extent. There have been, many, many, many attempts to do this since 2017, including one by myself (eheh, sorry).

What was the single underlying deterrent that has prevented any attempt from successfully materializing?

Roleplay.

Okay, okay, I get it, we are a roleplaying community. But establishing international standards is an urgent matter, and—admit it—we don't need to roleplay every last detail of our universe. There can always be predetermined events. Besides, I'm sure we've all seen the multiple attempts at roleplaying the creation of international organizations. From only the top of my head:

"Starting our own Model UN" by Orioni, OOC thread that never really materialized into a full-fledged RP. It was a great idea, in all honesty, and it definitely should've been one of Eurth's top goals. Most talk about this took place from late 2017 to mid-2018.
"When life gives you lemons, make GIN and tonic" also by Orioni, an attempt to create a Group of Island Nations (GIN). OOC planning started in early 2019, last activity was in June 2019.
"The Laws of the Sea" by Faramount and SSI. It was the talk of the town in late 2018, then it went silent.
"From Skies to Safety", my own, which was done with the help of Gallambria and Orioni (in line with plans for the UN thingy). Most activity regarding this was OOC planning sometime around mid- to late 2018, then it also went silent.
"The Thalassan War", a thread that I am currently in the process of resurrecting. Supposed to be a community thing (All nations around Andalla/Giokto are welcome), but everyone except me and SSI are dead.

I definitely don't intend to sound like I'm complaining. Not at all! I love it when people get together to help further our community's goals. But should it just stop there? Of course we try our best to keep roleplaying and creating lore co-equal, but sometimes we must create an imbalance so that the other side will rise up to balance it again.

For this problem, I propose we still do go on with our roleplaying, but instead turn the process upside-down.

What I tend to notice is that, whenever a new thread is made, its pre-existing OOC thread only deals with the overview; the large details. The finer details of the story are developed impromptu, as participants push the story forward through their posts.

What if we turn it around, just this once? We set all the important details in stone first—the organization's name, history and function, how it was established, what it does, its parent/child organizations, and which nations are participating. Then we begin roleplay.

@Orioni's idea about the Model UN was the best example of this; sadly it did not materialize. What O did was to first establish the mechanisms of the organization—who heads it, who participates in it, how meetings are convened, its committees and their purposes, etc.

What I further appreciate about Orioni's idea is how it focused on roleplaying the present, not the past. The OOC thread made little mention of history; rather, the RP thread/forum that would be created would instead show the UN in action, in the current timeline. Whereas other RPs like The Laws of the Sea focused on how it was established, and not what it really does.

So, what we should instead be doing, is creating a list of pre-existing international organizations with their important details already decided upon. Then we leave it to the great people of Eurth to take it upon themselves and create an associated RP thread, whether it be for depicting the organization's founding or depicting its activities in the present.

What if nobody chooses to RP it, at all? No problem. As long as it's on the list, it exists. People can cite it in their Wiki pages, news posts can make mention of it, even RP threads can use it. It will not matter whether or not said organization is actually being actively RPed, or just sitting there on the list. Why, it doesn't even need to be IC at all! It could even be a group of people on Discord, deciding random details about our RP universe like its currency and language as I've mentioned before, then recording it somewhere so that it becomes official lore and not generally accepted lore.

That way, we get to encourage standardization. I may be the guy who enjoys little details, but think of this. How are we going to regulate the size of a country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) beyond their coastlines? How are we going to determine who trades with who? How are we going to deal with pandemics and medical issues? How are we going to connect the world through transportation and telecommunications? How are we going to create more diplomatic interaction between members of the community?

There are existing international organizations to serve that purpose IRL, and we should have the same here, too. Again, it does not need to be roleplayed. The mere fact that it exists would be enough to bring our RP universe one step closer to achieving globalization and, ultimately, realism (hooray for using buzzwords).

This has been my TED talk and random brain fart. Thank you for your time.

Andalla · March 2, 2020

I've compiled a shortlist of organizations that Eurth needs. Some may already be existing, or in RP threads.

United Nations. Any sort of organization wherein most, if not all countries are a part of.
Regional organizations. Multitudes of regional organizations exist IRL for all sorts of reasons, both big and small. Right now, only very few nations are actually involved in big regional/international organizations like ATARA.
Church & Holy Land. Land to crusade on. We need to standardize things regarding religious history, or we'll be all over the place. Might also need to create lore for our Islam-equivalent sometime in the future.
International banks and stock exchanges. Mostly to regulate the long-debated international currency or dollar-equivalent. And exchange rates, if the need so arises. (nobody will ever want to bore themselves with that except me)
A giant list of large manufacturing corporations. Anything from massive machines to consumer goods. Not every country needs to be self-sufficient, but we're forced to be since we don't know the companies in your country!
UNESCO. We think of it as the historical places, but the "ESC" in the name stands for Education, Science, and Culture respectively. Most likely it would be better for this to be a mostly-OOC organization rather than IC. Would basically regulate our international language (Is it Anglish? English? Standard? Orionii?), plus those special non-RL terms that we use (Eurth, San, Mun, wurld, wurldbuilding, etc.).
WTO. To let countries trade with each other. Just because you have 2 friends doesn't mean you trade only with your 2 friends, unless you're deliberately isolationist.
UNCLOS & IMO. Literally just to make sure nations follow the 200-nautical mile rule in claiming their EEZ. Don't be like China. Also handles maritime trade, because apparently that's a big thing on Eurth since everyone wants a shipbuilding industry.
Transportation organizations. Roads and rails don't need to end at your border. They shouldn't.
Non-Proliferation Treaty & IAEA. Because nobody wants nukes. Just build power plants.
ISO. Standardization! My favorite.
UNDPO. Peacekeeping. Better done in groups of nations than individually (ahem, America).
WHO. Because coronavirus exists. I recall we had a "Pandemic" thread, but it died. Would be a good organization for news posts to cite, if the article is about health or diseases.
ICJ. Territorial disputes. The ICJ would be especially relevant now that Ceris is a thing.
UNHRC. To condemn naughty countries.
ITU. Who doesn't love telecommunications? The ITU handles everything from telegraphs to satellite TV. Fun fact, it's the world's oldest international organization. The big boss of all news agencies.
ICC & Interpol. For hunting down the bad guys.

Again, we don't need to roleplay all of them. It can be as simple as coming up with names for our Eurth-equivalents of the above organizations.

Tagmatium Rules · March 2, 2020

I'm going to comment on each thing in a similar breakdown. These are merely my thoughts on them, and if I sound negative at times, it's just my initial thoughts. I can be won over to anything pretty simply.

There is the UEL, the United Eurth League. It's got as far a charter, I believe, but I think it ended up being mooted for a couple of reasons. One was that Rihan was a relatively big driving force and anything that involved him got a bit tainted. I think people also got a bit snippy over who was to be considered to be on the Security Council. I'd be well on for getting the ball rolling on this again, though.
Again, there are regional organisations – EOS, TRIDENT and others. Europa itself also has had a long history of opposing alliances (see the subforums that still exist). A personal problem of mine is that I'm kind of the only person nearby. Sure, there is Machina @Haruspex, but his nation isn't really one that is held in high regard by the rest of the wurld right now.
@Faramount did start a thread on exactly that. It would also be the best place to go to continue on with this discussion. I think some of the “holy land” stuff is also tied in with Orioni's attempts to rework cultures in Europa.
Great idea, but sadly you might be right. It's not something that does interest me but I realise that it is definitely something that would add a lot more to the depth of our wurld. Again, there is a thread but it's over a decade old. I doubt it is fit for purpose.
Good idea. A problem is that it seems that unless you jump on something first, then you're almost a nonstarter. There's also my own disinterest in this sort of thing – logically, Tagmatium would have numerous large manufacturers and companies based there but I can find a lot of things much more interesting to distract myself with before I go and do that. That is a personal failing, however.
Morheim did start a thread along these lines. Perhaps that could be used for a basis for a UNESCO-type organisation?
Something that we definitely need.
This is kind of coming up between me and MH right now. I'd be keen on clarifying this topic.
And also this. I've expressed my interest in this hosting on Discord a few times and it's also a very f*cking good idea. It just makes so much sense.
Nukes aren't all that common, although that might well be more for meta reasons that other things. Nonetheless, it's a good idea and likely ties in with at least the pseudo-UN point.
I think that that's definitely your baby. I'll agree with whatever is done on this front.
We would need a functional pseudo-UN before this happens, otherwise it might well just fall into the bigger nations growling at each other over people stepping on each others' toes over spheres of influence, real or imagined.
Can only be a good thing.
A good idea, but one that might fall down on genuine cooperation. Especially with the more ooga booga nations.
Again, the need for a UN-style organisation might come first.
Good idea, again.
You and whose army? See below.

I think that a lot of these would pretty much fall into place, once we have a functioning UN-a-like. That is probably the key to most of these and something that we aim to achieve sooner rather than later.

Gallambria · March 2, 2020

In regards to UEL - the only thing holding us up from my point of view, is a lack of ratio legis.

Tagmatium Rules · March 2, 2020

13 minutes ago, Gallambria said:

In regards to UEL - the only thing holding us up from my point of view, is a lack of ratio legis.

Can you explain that further?

I don't get what you mean.

Gallambria · March 2, 2020

7 minutes ago, Tagmatium Rules said:

Can you explain that further?

I don't get what you mean.

Sorry.

Ratio Legis = Reasoning of Law.

When we look at the IRL UN, we had precursor organisations (League of Nations) and a reason to introduce the charter of the UN and the subsequent establishment (WW2).

Although, Eurth/Yurth/Europa/Whatever has a colourful and interesting history, there is nothing significant to justify its existence.

Tagmatium Rules · March 3, 2020

8 hours ago, Gallambria said:

Sorry.

Ratio Legis = Reasoning of Law.

When we look at the IRL UN, we had precursor organisations (League of Nations) and a reason to introduce the charter of the UN and the subsequent establishment (WW2).

Although, Eurth/Yurth/Europa/Whatever has a colourful and interesting history, there is nothing significant to justify its existence.

Yeah, I think that that was also a stumbling block. And tying it to a "new" historical event and retroactively bringing it in causes more problems than it solves.

Andalla · March 3, 2020

15 hours ago, Tagmatium Rules said:

I'm going to comment on each thing in a similar breakdown. These are merely my thoughts on them, and if I sound negative at times, it's just my initial thoughts. I can be won over to anything pretty simply.

There is the UEL, the United Eurth League. It's got as far a charter, I believe, but I think it ended up being mooted for a couple of reasons. One was that Rihan was a relatively big driving force and anything that involved him got a bit tainted. I think people also got a bit snippy over who was to be considered to be on the Security Council. I'd be well on for getting the ball rolling on this again, though.

Again, there are regional organisations – EOS, TRIDENT and others. Europa itself also has had a long history of opposing alliances (see the subforums that still exist). A personal problem of mine is that I'm kind of the only person nearby. Sure, there is Machina @Haruspex, but his nation isn't really one that is held in high regard by the rest of the wurld right now.

@Faramount did start a thread on exactly that. It would also be the best place to go to continue on with this discussion. I think some of the “holy land” stuff is also tied in with Orioni's attempts to rework cultures in Europa.

Great idea, but sadly you might be right. It's not something that does interest me but I realise that it is definitely something that would add a lot more to the depth of our wurld. Again, there is a thread but it's over a decade old. I doubt it is fit for purpose.

Good idea. A problem is that it seems that unless you jump on something first, then you're almost a nonstarter. There's also my own disinterest in this sort of thing – logically, Tagmatium would have numerous large manufacturers and companies based there but I can find a lot of things much more interesting to distract myself with before I go and do that. That is a personal failing, however.

Morheim did start a thread along these lines. Perhaps that could be used for a basis for a UNESCO-type organisation?

Something that we definitely need.

This is kind of coming up between me and MH right now. I'd be keen on clarifying this topic.

And also this. I've expressed my interest in this hosting on Discord a few times and it's also a very f*cking good idea. It just makes so much sense.

Nukes aren't all that common, although that might well be more for meta reasons that other things. Nonetheless, it's a good idea and likely ties in with at least the pseudo-UN point.

I think that that's definitely your baby. I'll agree with whatever is done on this front.

We would need a functional pseudo-UN before this happens, otherwise it might well just fall into the bigger nations growling at each other over people stepping on each others' toes over spheres of influence, real or imagined.

Can only be a good thing.

A good idea, but one that might fall down on genuine cooperation. Especially with the more ooga booga nations.

Again, the need for a UN-style organisation might come first.

Good idea, again.

You and whose army? See below.

I think that a lot of these would pretty much fall into place, once we have a functioning UN-a-like. That is probably the key to most of these and something that we aim to achieve sooner rather than later.

Thanks for the comments @Tagmatium Rules. I noticed you often mentioned “having a UN-like organization” first, which is exactly what I intended to do. Actually most of these organizations listed are UN agencies. So I’d assume our UN-like thing comes first, then the rest of the organizations.

9 hours ago, Gallambria said:

Sorry.

Ratio Legis = Reasoning of Law.

When we look at the IRL UN, we had precursor organisations (League of Nations) and a reason to introduce the charter of the UN and the subsequent establishment (WW2).

Although, Eurth/Yurth/Europa/Whatever has a colourful and interesting history, there is nothing significant to justify its existence.

Something I’ve been thinking about too. Our RP universe isn’t globalized enough to sustain a world war; anyway, it would make too big an impact to everyone’s history, now that there are so many nations on Eurth.

My idea is to first have small groups of nations establishing their own groups to deal with the globalization/standardization issue, then eventually the groups all merge to form the UN.

Another possibility is to have everyone unite under a common international problem, be it communication, trade, health, etc., then have that organization eventually expand to encompass more topics and thus become an actual UN. Interestingly, that’s how the ITU (Int’l Telecomms Union) was established—nations needed to standardize their telegraph system. Afaik the ITU is the first truly global organization of any kind, and helped a lot in starting up the globalization process.

Regarding the whole UN thing. I’ve noticed people tend to misunderstand its purpose. Yes, it’s a big authority on international issues and some certain countries might not like that, but at the basic level it’s simply an assembly of nations. Most UN stuff are in fact non-binding, which means nations don’t have to explicitly follow what the UN says (it’s frowned upon not to do so, however).

What I intend to accomplish through the creation of a Eurth UN is not to enforce rules, nor step on the sovereignty of individual nations. It’s just to simply have some sort of group where all nations can be a part of, so that at least we’re all on the same page.

Tagmatium Rules · March 3, 2020

So, @Andalla, you're suggesting that people are getting more bogged down with the idea that we "need" a conflict to act as the unifying or driving force for this thing, rather than getting the ball rolling?

That's probably a fair point.

Andalla · March 3, 2020

3 minutes ago, Tagmatium Rules said:

So, @Andalla, you're suggesting that people are getting more bogged down with the idea that we "need" a conflict to act as the unifying or driving force for this thing, rather than getting the ball rolling?

That's probably a fair point.

What @Gallambria said about the ratio legis. The League of Nations and subsequently the UN are both products of the World Wars. My solution to creating these organizations despite our lack of world wars is stated above.

EDIT: I don't mean we need a war. It's just that "war" is the most effective mutual issue to make nations cooperate with each other. There are a lot of other mutual issues that we can use as the ratio legis for our UN-equivalent.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Andalla (see edit history)

Gallambria · March 3, 2020

1 hour ago, Andalla said:

What @Gallambria said about the ratio legis. The League of Nations and subsequently the UN are both products of the World Wars. My solution to creating these organizations despite our lack of world wars is stated above.

EDIT: I don't mean we need a war. It's just that "war" is the most effective mutual issue to make nations cooperate with each other. There are a lot of other mutual issues that we can use as the ratio legis for our UN-equivalent.

I would have to disagree with you there. The whole purpose behind the establishment of the UN was the maintenance of peace, and providing a alternative form of discourse to settle international disputes other than warfare of any sort.

Tagmatium Rules · March 3, 2020

37 minutes ago, Gallambria said:

I would have to disagree with you there. The whole purpose behind the establishment of the UN was the maintenance of peace, and providing a alternative form of discourse to settle international disputes other than warfare of any sort.

Would something more like an international tribunal be more appropriate to set up, if a catalyst to this isn't a war?

Xio · March 4, 2020

Weren’t we meant to have a resource/oil war later this year? Might work as a good catalyst for a Eurth UN, if people are willing to smack each other about for a couple months (time inside the resource war would probably be made to go quicker then anything outside of it, so we can have a multi-year long conflict w/o having to take over 3 years to do)

Morheim · March 5, 2020

For me one issue is that its hard to have relations between nations. I've been here a while and struggle to find ways of interacting with other nations beyond a few who I'm friends with for a while elsewhere around NSland. If we're having international organisations they'd need to be built on international relations existing and so therefore we'd need to have more interactions between nations prior to them.

In my view we do have a UNESCO through the organisation my RP set up, sadly not on PC at the moment so can't find the link. We also have an environmental treaty that was put forward. These were both RP'd out.

I think a bigger concern rather than having loads of international organisations and standards is to promote people having active ongoing and interesting RP oppurtunities with newer people.

Salvia · March 6, 2020

On 3/5/2020 at 5:51 AM, Morheim said:

For me one issue is that its hard to have relations between nations. I've been here a while and struggle to find ways of interacting with other nations beyond a few who I'm friends with for a while elsewhere around NSland.

Create a Foreign Affairs thread. Developing relationships becomes 100x easier.

(I just realized this kinda comes off as passive aggressive and I did not mean it like that lol)

Edited March 6, 2020 by Salvia (see edit history)

Morheim · March 6, 2020

1 hour ago, Salvia said:

Create a Foreign Affairs thread. Developing relationships becomes 100x easier.

(I just realized this kinda comes off as passive aggressive and I did not mean it like that lol)

Don't worry didn't think it was.

What I mean by developing relationships its beyond things like having embassies etc. I mean having oppurtunities for interact. If I give an example from another region I've been very active in. Nations RP out things like significant events in their nation, so in the past I've hosted a festival based around my nations interest in arts and crafts and the fact they have diamond mines. This became a Jewel of the Desert festival and a chance for nations to meet in an informal setting, various off hand meetings etc. Similarly things like royal weddings and the like. Most of the Foreign Affairs threads just seem back and forths of setting up things.

Tagmatium Rules · March 9, 2020

On 3/5/2020 at 10:51 AM, Morheim said:

For me one issue is that its hard to have relations between nations. I've been here a while and struggle to find ways of interacting with other nations beyond a few who I'm friends with for a while elsewhere around NSland. If we're having international organisations they'd need to be built on international relations existing and so therefore we'd need to have more interactions between nations prior to them.

In my view we do have a UNESCO through the organisation my RP set up, sadly not on PC at the moment so can't find the link. We also have an environmental treaty that was put forward. These were both RP'd out.

I think a bigger concern rather than having loads of international organisations and standards is to promote people having active ongoing and interesting RP oppurtunities with newer people.

The UNESCO thread is linked here in my first post here.

Andalla · March 9, 2020

On 3/4/2020 at 8:33 PM, Metztlitlalio said:

Weren’t we meant to have a resource/oil war later this year? Might work as a good catalyst for a Eurth UN, if people are willing to smack each other about for a couple months (time inside the resource war would probably be made to go quicker then anything outside of it, so we can have a multi-year long conflict w/o having to take over 3 years to do)

Hmm... Come to think about it. Does the community prefer this whole UN thing to be set up in the present timeline, or done retrospectively?

Each one has their ups and downs. I've noticed, for the longest time now, a majority of the community supports doing it in the present timeline, i.e. we have an actual war/catalyst event right now so that we can create the UN. This is far more efficient and easier to manage as opposed to doing it retrospectively, as we don't need to consider its effects on the present-day—because we are doing it in the present.

On the other hand, the creation of the UN itself in 1945 has played an undeniably massive role in how the world has developed since then. Sure, a lot of people—especially in the US and elsewhere—don't exactly see the UN as an effective lawmaking body, but we can't deny that the UN has made a huge indirect impact on how things are run. Perhaps not in the area of war and politics, but rather in economics, trade and globalization. (TL;DR at bottom 😅)

To start it off, I'm sure everybody here knows basically every nation is dependent on globalization (trade, travel, communications, etc.). Some will claim to be more self-sufficient than others, which is acceptable—but what do you think would happen to your nation if you were isolated? Well, of course you'd probably still maintain connections with your closest neighbors. But allow me to ask one question:

Does Eurth's lack of connections between nations justify our level of technology?

Since we're a modern-tech group, we're assumed to have all, or most of the technologies and innovations that real life has to offer. That means standardization exists. Without standardization, we wouldn't have these things:

(EDIT: Read only the stuff in bold if you don't want to get bored)

A global Internet network. This is pretty much a given. At the bare-bones level the Internet is just a really good communication medium, and you can't communicate properly without first understanding each other.
Communication. From snail mail and telegrams to text messages and telephone calls, it's standardized every step of the way. Again, you can't communicate properly without first understanding each other.
International trade. Mostly through container ships, but also by road, rail and air. There are plenty of standards surrounding the sizes of the containers that things are placed in, most notably (a) cardboard boxes, (b) cargo pallets, and (c) shipping containers. Before standards were developed, you had to find some way to pack up your stuff, throw it in the cargo hold, and hope that it fits. Definitely nowhere near the efficiency of the global economy today.
Food surplus. Same idea as the previous one. Human civilization exists because of food surplus—one person can feed more than only himself. International trade allows countries to easily exchange food and send it where it's needed. If not, your nation should have a lot more farmers and shepherds than there should be.
Transportation. Air traffic control procedures, airport facilities, railway gauges, road construction, fuel, vehicle standards, just to name a few. You may find a few slight differences from country to country, but everyone having a different system won't get you anywhere.
Laws of war. Pretty self-explanatory. They don't always work, but we're far, far, far better off with them than without.

Basically, we'd still be living in some alternate reality 1800's where people had lots of funny futuristic toys to play with—should we choose to create these organizations in the present timeline.

But I'm also not saying that we have to create our own ISO and write 23,075 boring documents on standardization. I'm saying that we probably wouldn't arrive at this tech level without the help of pre-existing international organizations, and it would probably be better if we at least acknowledged the existence of such.

TL;DR — Can we create international organizations retrospectively? No need to RP, just create a rudimentary Wiki page of some sort, plus a forum thread for anyone wishing to RP its present-day activities. Because we definitely wouldn't have reached this level without some form of globalization first.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Andalla (see edit history)

Cristina · March 9, 2020

I think we can simply assume that an UN thing has been around for some time.

Also, each nation would just post a list of nations in which it has no embassy in them and assume that they have diplomatic/trade relations with all the others (RPing it on the way).

Andalla · March 9, 2020

42 minutes ago, Cristina said:

I think we can simply assume that an UN thing has been around for some time.

Also, each nation would just post a list of nations in which it has no embassy in them and assume that they have diplomatic/trade relations with all the others (RPing it on the way).

Right on point! The embassy thing is a great idea, if we flesh out the rules a bit.

In a globalized world, one would be more likely to have an embassy than not. I think the problem here is many people think that having embassies automatically means "we're best friends". Which may be the case, but often it just means "we're cool with each other" or "we're not enemies" or something along the lines of that.

Then again we have to emphasize lore first, then RP. What many people don't like about this whole endeavor is that it's a large-scale global thing, which may put off some (like the "I CAN'T WRITE 6 F*ING NOVELS Discord guy). Set up the lore first, acknowledge its existence. Then it's your choice if you want to actually RP it or not.

Tagmatium Rules · March 9, 2020

For fear of doing exactly what I was trying to not do earlier, there are a few problems with retroactively introducing it. I've said this before but I feel the point needs reiterating.

I realise that the easiest way to do this is retroactive route, but the problem that that throws up is that either we end up having to awkwardly weld it into the stories that have already been written, or the organisation is far more toothless than any IRL organisation is. Which means that no one is likely to bother with it anyway.

Glimmer · March 10, 2020

12 hours ago, Andalla said:

many people think that having embassies automatically means "we're best friends".

After the Cuban revolution, America did not immediately terminate the Cuban embassy. The USSR and America also notably did have an embassy exchange despite the fact that the whole Cold War thing was going on.

Faramount · August 1, 2020

So I hate to grave dig, but I do think this is an important topic. I was looking at the Eurth treaties page and...well, it's quite bare, lol. I do think it makes a lot of sense to do some of this stuff retroactively. We need to create a history for our Eurth; why would it not include international organizations?

I think toothlessness could be a great way to square having these organizations with everybody having their own histories. And toothlessness could easily be explained if these organizations were mostly created ad hoc for minor reasons, not after a world war. I like the idea of the UN being founded not to stop wars, but merely to coordinate amongst the numerous separate international entities in existence.

I'll also say that RPing the creation of a lot of things is something that nobody will want to do. The international maritime convention RP is a great example of this. Debating the finer points of international law is boring AF. Who wants to RP that? I think it makes a lot more sense to just have an OOC thread discussing what we think would've been created (using RL as a base), making a wiki page, and then moving onwards. If people want to do a historical RP of it, that's always an option.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Faramount (see edit history)

Glimmer · August 1, 2020

4 hours ago, Faramount said:

So I hate to grave dig, but I do think this is an important topic. I was looking at the Eurth treaties page and...well, it's quite bare, lol. I do think it makes a lot of sense to do some of this stuff retroactively. We need to create a history for our Eurth; why would it not include international organizations?

I think toothlessness could be a great way to square having these organizations with everybody having their own histories. And toothlessness could easily be explained if these organizations were mostly created ad hoc for minor reasons, not after a world war. I like the idea of the UN being founded not to stop wars, but merely to coordinate amongst the numerous separate international entities in existence.

I'll also say that RPing the creation of a lot of things is something that nobody will want to do. The international maritime convention RP is a great example of this. Debating the finer points of international law is boring AF. Who wants to RP that? I think it makes a lot more sense to just have an OOC thread discussing what we think would've been created (using RL as a base), making a wiki page, and then moving onwards. If people want to do a historical RP of it, that's always an option.

Even if we didn't have an issue with doing this we only have so much time on our hands as we have real lives and don't (unfortunately?) do this full time. We will want to focus on writing far more enjoyable RPs we are passionate about as opposed to something merely procedural for the sake of establishing it.

Faramount · August 2, 2020

So I've given this a bit of thought, and I do have a more concrete proposal for how the history of our UN could look, if we wanted something that justifies more globalization without reaching the level of cohesion present IRL. My proposal is that there is very little treaty-based international law prior to 1959. There are a lot of informal rules that everybody has followed for centuries, but nobody has actually written much of this down. To the extent that things are written down, it's mostly in various treaties between nations, not in any larger international convention.

Rising international commerce leads nations in 1959 to create the International Maritime Convention to regulate sea commerce. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is formed to administer this treaty. This treaty is so easy to create and implement that nations quickly adopt similar conventions on aviation, rail, road traffic, and mail in order to facilitate trade. Given that the IMO was just created and is overseeing similar commerce-related stuff, the signatories of these four new conventions agree to just have the IMO administer their provisions.

The IMO has some real mission creep in the 1960s-1970s as, for the purpose of simplicity of administration, its given charge of various other treaties. The IMO is now touching on every aspect of transportation, so when a global trade convention is adopted in the 1960s, the IMO is put in charge of it. The maritime, rail, road traffic, and aviation conventions have some toothless environmental provisions that the IMO has to administer, so when a toothless environmental convention is passed in the 70s, it makes sense to have the IMO administer it. Space capsules sometimes land in water, so obviously, the International Maritime Organization should administer the International Space Convention, too.

I'm imagining that the first Ebola outbreak in the 1970s/1980s (perhaps in Faramount?) could spark the real move of the IMO in the direction of becoming a more general assembly. There's a need for rapid global action to stop the epidemic, and there's only one international organization that already has the infrastructure in place to organize a response: the IMO. So the IMO meets, devises a strategy, gets nations to pledge resources, and oversees the response.

The IMO is just accepted as the international organization after that point, and there's no attempt to justify why it's being put in charge of things. International Human Rights Convention? IMO administers. International Convention on the Laws of War? IMO administers. Cultural heritage preservation? IMO administers. What's that? A state has collapsed in the 3rd world and there's a looming food crisis? Let's send in "International Maritime Peacekeepers". Did someone say genocide? We'll have the International Maritime Court try the instigator for war crimes.

The International Maritime Organization is administering dozens of conventions, and doing tons of other stuff, by the 2000s. There is finally an agreement that it is absurd that we're still calling this the maritime organization, so a convention is held to revise the IMO charter. The organization is renamed the United Eurth League, and is given more broad powers to promote peace and prosperity. The International Maritime Tribunal -- which has been hearing war crimes cases, territorial disputes, and other clearly non-maritime cases for decades -- is renamed the United Court of International Law. Thus we have our UN and ICJ.

help International Organizations

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