Scouting around the world - National Scout Organisations
The World organizations WOSM and WAGGGS recognize only one member organization per country. So in countries where there is more than one Scouting association, these associations can choose to cooperate and form a National Scout Organization (NSO; at least, that is the WOSM term; I couldn't find the WAGGGS equivalent of this term, but the idea is similar).

But in some countries, just one of the Scouting organizations is affiliated with WOSM and WAGGGS, and the other organizations are not.

To make this clear, the InterNETional Scouting pages has small WOSM and WAGGS logos on the pages describing the Scouting and Guiding program in each country:

WOSM info WAGGGS info

These icons also function as a link; for WAGGGS, it brings you directly to the official description page for that country at the WAGGGS site. WOSM doesn't have such a service (yet), so there it just brings you to the complete list of member organizations world-wide.

NOTE: I have chosen to make no distinction between full members and associate members in these icons, basically since it was not so easy to figure out the status without any officcial help.

If no WOSM or WAGGGS logo is shown next to a Scouting organization, then it is not a member of the world organizations. In many cases, it is a new Scouting or Guiding organization (e.g. in eastern Europe), which is still in the process of applying for membership.

Links to the so-called dissident Scouting organizations (the ones who left WOSM, but still call themselves scouts) have been removed from this site. If I overlooked one, just let me know. It's quite difficult to figure out which organizations belong to WOSM and WAGGGS and which ones don't.

WOSM and WAGGGS now also maintain official lists of member web sites:
topBack to the InterNETional Scouting Page
d.jansen@scoutnet.nl

Last modified: Tue Apr 20 13:50:31 1999