International Scouting Organizations

From Brownsea Island in 1907, Scouting has spread to almost every country in the world. Indeed, most countries have more than one national Scouting association. While a majority of the world's Scouts belong to national associations affiliated with the two largest international Scouting organizations, there are dozens of national and local associations affiliated with several other international Scouting bodies, and more that are independent of any international organization. There are also organizations that do not consider themselves to be Scouting organizations (they sometimes refer to themselves as "Scout-like" organizations), but nevertheless base their program ultimately on Baden-Powell's Scouting concepts.

So who is a "Scout"? The words "scout" and "scouting" are fairly broad terms that are used by many organizations. And there are non-Scouting organizations that include "scout-like" activities such as camping, hiking, and outdoor skills (some even wear a Scout-type uniform). For simplicity, I include in "Scouting" any organization that labels itself a Scouting program and which bases its program on Baden-Powell's Scouting concepts and ideals. I include both males and females in the definition of "Scout", and I include male-only, female-only, and coed associations in the definition of "Scouting". Note that there have been female Scouts since the earliest days of Scouting—female Scouts are often called Guides, and I include Guiding associations in world Scouting (Scouting and Guiding were both started by Baden-Powell).

There are quite a few individual Scout groups (especially in Germany) that operate their own local program independent of any national or regional association. These are difficult to find and track, and they frequently go into or out of existence when leadership changes. So I list the unaffiliated single groups I have discovered separately, and do not count them in the "organization" totals.

Brownsea Island—where it all began

There are well over 500 separate national (or regional) Scouting associations in the world. Most have felt the need to create international Scouting organizations to set standards for Scouting and to coordinate activities among member associations. As a result, we know of six international Scouting organizations that serve most (but not all) of the world's national associations, plus a seventh international organization that is just for adults. The largest two organizations include the vast majority of the world's Scouts. Four other international organizations include just over 100 (mostly small) associations, and there are over 80 other small (mostly German) associations that are independent of any international organization.

The international Scouting picture is complicated somewhat by the loss of the old distinction between a Scouting Movement for boys and a separate Scouting (or Guiding) Movement for girls. Since about 1970, the trend toward coed Scouting has accelerated, and today coed Scouting is the norm in many countries. This has created difficulties for the two largest international Scouting organizations: WOSM (World Organization of the Scout Movement), which formerly represented only male-only associations, and WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts), which formerly represented only female-only associations. Today, WOSM counts over a million girls and young women among its members, and has changed its mission statements to reflect goals for "young people" rather than "boys and young men". WAGGGS still sets its mission goals in terms of "girls and young women", even though it counts a small number of boys and young men among its members (about 11 000). WOSM and WAGGGS have been discussing ways of uniting, but this process is likely to take many years. [The other four international organizations are all coed.]

Why isn't everybody in WOSM or WAGGGS? Those associations that prefer not to belong to WOSM or WAGGGS tend to share several viewpoints:

Some believe that WOSM and its national associations have strayed from Baden-Powell's concepts of Scouting.
Some object to WOSM's one-national-Scouting-association-per-country policy (which forces multiple national Scouting associations either to merge, or to create an umbrella federation to represent them in WOSM).
Some desire to use B-P's Scouting for Boys and his original 1908 program and uniform to the maximum extent possible, making only those minimal changes required by modern safety, health, or environmental concerns.
Some are strongly church-focused, and some have a Christian-only membership policy.

Click on the icons below for more information and a list of all member associations in each of the six international Scouting organizations for youth and a seventh international organization for adults (with over 90 adult-only Scouting associations). Below the icons are additional links to all the non-aligned national Scouting associations that I have found and to our pages showing all the Scouting associations in every country of the world.

International Scouting Organizations


World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM)	World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS)	Federation of European Scouting (FSE)	Confederation of European Scouts (CES)	World Federation of Independent Scouts (WFIS)	Order of World Scouts (OWS)	International Scout and Guide Fellowship (ISGF)

This table summarizes the totals for the six international organizations with youth members plus the non-aligned associations. The 52 associations and 4 federations that belong to both WOSM and WAGGGS are counted in each group's total, but are counted only once for the grand total.

International Organization	Total Associations	National Associations	Umbrella Federations	Countries (+territories)
WOSM	221	201	20	167(+1)
WAGGGS	197	181	16	142(+4)
[WOSM+WAGGGS]	[63]	[56]	[7]	[35]
FSE	19	19	0	16
CES	16	15	1	7
WFIS	51	49	2	27
OWS	18	18	0	12
Non-aligned	82	78	4	20
TOTAL	541	505	36	190

Fragmented Scouting. While most countries typically have two or three Scouting associations, there are six countries where Scouting is incredibly fragmented:

Germany—40 associations [plus dozens of unaffiliated single groups] !
Lebanon—31 associations
Spain—25 associations
Italy—21 associations
Canada—14 associations
France—13 associations

Here are links to our pages that describe the many interesting aspects of a Scouting world that is probably more varied and dynamic than you thought:

Non-aligned Scouting Associations (82 associations in 20 countries)
Unaffiliated Single Groups (55 groups in 3 countries)
Scout-like Organizations (we've found more than a dozen, and there've got to be more)

All National (and local) Scouting Associations in Every Country (all 195 countries in the world, listing all known Scouting associations in each)