International Seabed Authority is a non-profit organisation based in the United Kingdom.

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) was founded in 1994 to govern mining and related activities on the international seabed outside of national jurisdiction, which encompasses the majority of the world's oceans. The ISA was established when the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea entered into force in 1982, codifying international law concerning territorial waters, sea lanes, and ocean resources. The ISA has more than 150 state members and is based in Kingston, Jamaica.

The ISA's supreme authority is the assembly, which is comprised of all ISA members. The assembly develops broad policy, budgets, and elects a 36-member council as the ISA's executive authority. The council approves contracts with private corporations and government entities for exploration and mining in designated areas of the international seabed, supervises the implementation of the Convention on the Law of the Sea's seabed provisions, and establishes provisional rules and procedures (subject to assembly approval) by which the ISA exercises its regulatory authority. The ISA secretary-general is nominated by the council and elected to a four-year term by the assembly. The annual plenary sessions of the ISA, which span two weeks on average, are held in Kingston.

To support and encourage scientists from disadvantaged nations to contribute to global marine studies, the ISA established the Endowment Fund to Support Collaborative Marine Scientific Research on the International Seabed Area in 2006. In 2008, more effort was put into recruiting new members, improving transnational cooperation, and raising cash.

Jamaica's capital is Kingston.

Kingston is the capital, largest city, and main port of Jamaica, extending along the island's southeastern coast and backed by the Blue Mountains. It is known for its beautiful natural harbour, which is sheltered by the Palisadoes, a small peninsula that has been developed as a recreational and tourist destination.

After an earthquake demolished Port Royal, near the mouth of the harbour, Kingston was created in 1692. The old city's core is a carefully organised rectangle with streets laid out in a grid layout. In 1703, the city was designated as Jamaica's commercial capital, and in 1872, it was designated as the country's political capital. It was almost completely destroyed by fire on multiple occasions, and it was severely damaged by an earthquake in January 1907.

Modern buildings contrast strongly with crumbling architectural artefacts from previous centuries on the city's principal streets. The Church of St. Thomas, located on King Street, the city's main street, was established before 1699 but was renovated following the 1907 earthquake. Rockfort, a moated fortification built from the late 17th century and last manned in 1865, is located on the town's eastern outskirts. Built by Thomas Hibbert, an 18th-century trader, on Duke Street, Headquarters House (previously the seat of government) is one of the few remaining architectural showpieces of a city formerly known for its splendid buildings. On East Street, the Institute of Jamaica runs a public library, museum, and art gallery dedicated to local interests. Mona, 5 miles (8 kilometres) from Kingston's city centre, is home to the University of the West Indies, which was founded in 1948. Nearby Hope is home to the Royal Botanical Gardens.

The original wharves were mostly dismantled by the 1980s, and the entire waterfront was redeveloped with hotels, stores, offices, a cultural centre, and cruise and freight ship facilities. Palisadoes Airport serves both domestic and international flights. A government-owned railway ran for 210 miles (340 km) from Kingston to most of Jamaica's 14 parishes until 1992, when it was shut down due to a lack of financing and minimal passenger traffic. Bauxite is still transported by rail on a few routes.

Since 1923, the original Kingston's small parish has been geographically and administratively amalgamated with St. Andrew's parish. Within the limits of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation, more than a quarter of the population of the country lives. The population of Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation was 662,426 in 2011.

Overview of the 1970s in Kingston

Two reasons have contributed to Kingston's growth as a notable music centre. The first is geographical: Jamaica was close enough to the US to be influenced by its music—New Orleans, Louisiana, radio stations could be heard in Kingston, and sailors routinely returned to Jamaica with rhythm-and-blues records recorded in the US—but far enough away to avoid being absorbed by it. The second reason is political: as a result of the US government's efforts to isolate Cuba, Kingston has supplanted Havana as the Caribbean's music capital.

Several rival hustlers who functioned as both label owners and producers produced Jamaica's distinctively unbalanced rhythms (part New Orleans, part local traditional music) throughout the 1960s. Studio One's founder, Coxsone Dodd, and his quirky in-house engineer, Lee Perry, who produced major Bob Marley tunes, were the most imaginative of the lot. Leslie Kong, a Chinese-Jamaican businessman and former restaurateur, was initially more successful with his Beverley's label. His productions dominated the 1972 film The Harder They Come, and he organised Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion" session, which together effectively exposed reggae to the rest of the globe. Kong's untimely death in 1971 paved the way for others like Dodd, Joe Gibbs, and Duke Reid to perform at Treasure Isle on Bond Street, making beautiful and light music.

Island Records boss Chris Blackwell, who believed Marley could become an international sensation and supplied the finances for recording and marketing his records until his vision was realised, overshadowed this producer-dominated structure. Nonetheless, for all of Bob Marley's global reach, Kingston's studio experimenters had at least as much long-term impact. The approach of toasters like I-Roy and Big Youth, who improvised "talk-overs" while engineers remixed rhythms of previously recorded backing tracks, was a direct forerunner of American hip-hop; and "dub" producers like King Tubby and Perry pushed their primitive equipment to its limits, introducing avant-garde notions of rhythm, arrangement, and structure that influenced many producers working with state-of-the-art equipment around the world.

a worldwide organisation

international organisation, an organisation with members from at least three countries, activity in multiple countries, and members bound by a formal agreement. A coordinating body, the Union of International Associations, distinguishes between the more than 250 international governmental organisations (IGOs) established by intergovernmental agreements and whose members are states, and the approximately 6,000 nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) whose members are associations or individuals.

IGOs range in number from three to over 185 members (e.g., the United Nations [UN]), and their geographic representation ranges from one world area (e.g., the Organization of American States) to all world regions (e.g., the United Nations [UN]) (e.g., the International Monetary Fund). While some IGOs (such as the World Intellectual Property Organization) are meant to accomplish a single goal, others have been created to accomplish numerous goals (e.g., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Depending on their size and tasks, their organisational structures might be basic or complicated.

Although European writers such as Pierre Dubois (c. 1250–c. 1320) and Émeric Crucé (c. 1590–1648) envisioned nascent international organisations, they did not arise in their current shape until the 19th century. Following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the leaders of the major European powers met on a regular basis in the Concert of Europe to try to maintain the status quo and safeguard their governments from domestic unrest. Various international organisations, such as the International Telegraph Union (1865; now the International Telecommunication Union), were formed later in the nineteenth century to provide specialised services and undertake specified functions. European and non-European powers gathered in 1899 and 1907 to devise laws to govern weaponry and warfare. The Hague Conventions, which included agreements on the peaceful resolution of conflict, the treatment of prisoners of war, and the rights of neutral governments, were the result of these conferences. These many gatherings and agreements served as forerunners to twentieth-century international institutions like the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN). The UN became the centrepiece of a network of international organisations as a result of the political and economic interdependencies that evolved following World War II, as well as breakthroughs in communication and transportation.

International organisations perform a wide range of tasks, including gathering data and monitoring trends (e.g., the World Meteorological Organization), providing services and aid (e.g., the World Health Organization), and providing forums for bargaining (e.g., the European Union) and resolving disputes (e.g., the United Nations) (e.g., the World Trade Organization). International organisations can serve to develop cooperative behaviour by offering political mechanisms through which governments can work together to achieve common goals. Individual governments can also benefit from IGOs, which are frequently used as foreign policy instruments to legitimise their activities and control the behaviour of other states.

Although specialised international bureaucracies administer the day-to-day operations of most international organisations, state members retain ultimate control. IGOs frequently collaborate with other organisations, such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (e.g., Greenpeace and Amnesty International), which perform many of the same functions as IGOs and are especially useful for mobilising public support, monitoring the effectiveness of international aid, and providing information and expertise. Thousands of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) focus their efforts on developing countries in Africa and Asia, some of which have authoritarian governments, although the majority of these organisations are based in industrialised countries with pluralist political systems. Only a small percentage of NGOs are international in scope, despite their growing importance in international relations.