Responsible Institutions

International (and regional) Recognition

NSBs of developing countries should become active members of at least ISO, IEC, ITU and Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC).

Such membership can be obtained at various levels, e.g. member, correspondent member and subscriber member in the case of ISO, or full member and associate member in the case of the IEC. Each level of membership confers certain privileges, full membership obviously the most. Privileges include voting rights in the General Assembly (ISO) or Council (IEC), membership status in Technical Committees and the rights to adopt ISO and IEC standards without infringing their copyright. The latter is especially important for developing countries, as they are mostly ‘standards takers’.

Similar arguments hold true for regional standardisation organisations, with the difference that these are mostly political constructs of regional trading blocs such as the EU, EAC, SADC, CARICOM, UNACOSUR, NAFTA, EAEC, ASEAN, etc. In this case, membership is mostly automatic for the NSBs to represent their countries, but their level of active involvement still needs be managed.