About the Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential is a result of an ambitious effort to collect and present information on the problems humanity is confronted with, as well as the challenges such problems pose to societies' values, development strategies and concept formation. This long-term research project, initiated in 1972 in collaboration with a non-profit called Mankind 2000, continues to this day under the auspices of Union of International Associations (UIA). It consists of 6 databases counting about 100,000 heavily interlinked profiles. The main sources of the information include international periodicals as well as documents of some 28,000 international non-profit organizations profiled in the complementary Yearbook of International Organizations. The compilation, analysis and editing is carried out by a small, enthusiastic team of volunteers. The resulting structured data is available not only via this website but also by way of a state-of-the-art REST API under Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA).