• • • The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on 1 January 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which commenced in 1948. [5] The organization deals with regulation of trade between participating countries; it provides a framework for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements, and a dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participant's adherence to WTO agreements, which are signed by representatives of member governments[6]: fol. 9– 10 and ratified by their parliaments. [7] Most of the issues that the WTO focuses on derive from previous trade negotiations, especially from the Uruguay Round (1986– 1994). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; /ˈneɪtoʊ/ NAY-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's "Partnership for Peace", with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending. [4] NATO was not much more than a political association until the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U. S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the organization was drawn into the breakup of Yugoslavia, and conducted its first military interventions in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995 and later. Yugoslavia in 1999. Politically, the organization sought better relations with former Warsaw Pact countries, several of which joined the alliance in 1999 and 2004.
• • Life expectancy at birth in Kazakhstan is 148 th in the world, below most developed nations and some developing nations. It is below the average life expectancy for the European Union. [1][2] The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked Kazakhstani health care system as the 64 th in overall performance, and 135 th by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study). Health Care System[edit] Health care in Kazakhstan is provided by a network of primary, secondary and tertiary care facilities. Health care facilities are largely owned and operated by the public sector represented by the Ministry of Health insurance is now primarily provided by the government in the public sector. Providers[edit] Health care providers in Kazakhstan encompass individual health care personnel, health care facilities and medical products. Facilities[edit]