Most non-communist national teachers' unions refused to join FISE. IFTA, FIPESO, and FISE formed a liaison group, the Joint Committee of International Teachers' Federations, the same year. But the American-dominated WOTP refused to join. In 1951, following the split in the WFTU and the creation of the anti-communist ICFTU, two new international education secretariats were created. WOTP, FIPESO and the IFTA formed the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession (WCOTP). The AFL (primary backer of the ICFTU) and its teacher union (the American Federation of Teachers) pushed the ICFTU to form its own international secretariat to compete with the much more liberal WCOTP. The conservative and determinedly anti-communist International Federation of Free Teachers' Unions (IFFTU) was created the same year as the WCOTP. FISE, meanwhile, affiliated with the WFTU. The IFFTU remained the much smaller organization until the mid-1970s. Although both the WCOTP and IFFTU gained members through the next 25 years, by 1976 the IFFTU represented unions with only 2.3 million members while the WCOTP represented unions with more than 20 million members. The WCOTP worked closely with the United Nations, UNESCO and the ILO to study the problems of teachers throughout the world, and focused much of its attention on Africa and Asia. For the first 15 years of its existence, the WCOTP worked heavily on a draft UNESCO instrument which would create a consensus on the status, salaries, and protections teachers should have. The final document, "Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers," was adopted by UNESCO on October 5, 1966. The IFFTU and WCOTP remained strong rivals, each organization's policies and actions often reflecting the rivalry between the NEA and AFT (which were their respective secretariat's largest members). But the surge in growth in AFT membership in the 1960s and 1970s significantly improved the membership figures of the IFFTU. A turn away from radical political views by a number of European, African and Asian education unions led a number of national organizations to disaffiliate from the WCOTP and join the IFFTU. On January 26, 1993, the WCOTP and IFFTU merged at a convention in Stockholm to form Education International. The stronger membership of the IFFTU at WCOTP expense led both organizations to see merger as a resolution to continuing conflict and competition, and merger was strongly advocated by AFT president Albert Shanker. The collapse of Soviet bloc communist also helped to remove lingering political differences