Organisations & HQ — PPSC previous year questions

ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), founded at Bangkok in 1967, had ten members for many years: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia; Timor-Leste was admitted as the eleventh member in October 2025. India is not a member; it is an ASEAN dialogue partner and takes part in the ASEAN–India summits and the East Asia Summit.

ILO is at Geneva (II), IMF at Washington D.C. (I), UNESCO at Paris (IV) and UNICEF at New York (III). Memory aid by city: the Bretton Woods twins (IMF, World Bank) are in Washington; ILO, WHO and WTO share Geneva; UNICEF and UNDP sit with the UN Secretariat in New York; UNESCO is in Paris and FAO in Rome.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is headquartered at Geneva, Switzerland. It is a specialised agency of the UN, established in 1967 to promote and protect patents, trademarks and copyrights worldwide. Geneva also hosts the WHO, ILO, WTO, UNHCR and the International Red Cross. Washington houses the IMF and World Bank. Oslo has the Nobel Peace Prize committee, and Stockholm the other Nobel bodies.

The World Bank, like the IMF, has its headquarters in Washington, D.C.; both were created at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944. New York hosts the United Nations, Paris hosts UNESCO and the OECD, and Oslo is associated with the Nobel Peace Prize.

The G20 has no permanent secretariat or staff; the presidency rotates among members each year and the host country runs it, so statement 2 is correct. Statement 1 is wrong because the G20 was founded in 1999 as a forum of finance ministers (its leaders' summits began in 2008 after the financial crisis), and statement 3 is wrong because India has hosted the summit only once, in New Delhi in 2023.

AUKUS is a security partnership announced in September 2021 between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States; its name is formed from their initials. Its first big project is helping Australia get nuclear-powered submarines.

SAARC has eight members: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Myanmar is not a member; it belongs to ASEAN and BIMSTEC instead.

The G20 was created in 1999, after the Asian financial crisis. Its first official meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors was held in Berlin on 15–16 December 1999. The German and Canadian finance ministers hosted it jointly. Leaders' summits began only in 2008, in Washington DC. London hosted the second summit in April 2009. Rome hosted the 2021 summit. India held the presidency in 2023, with the summit in New Delhi.

Russia is not a member of OPEC; it is the leading non-OPEC producer that coordinates output with the cartel under the wider OPEC+ arrangement since 2016. The United Arab Emirates (joined 1967), Gabon (re-joined 2016) and Nigeria (1971) are full OPEC members. OPEC was founded in Baghdad in 1960 and is headquartered in Vienna.

The G20 has 19 countries plus the European Union, and the African Union since 2023. The members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the USA. Singapore is not a member. It is often invited as a guest.