The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) was an international trade union. It came into being on 7 December 1949 following a split within the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), and was dissolved on 31 October 2006 when it merged with the World Confederation of Labour (WCL) to form the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Prior to being dissolved, the ICFTU had a membership of 157 million members in 225 affiliated organisations in 148 countries and territories. History In 1949, early in the Cold War, alleging Communist domination of the WFTU's central institutions, a large number of non-communist national trade union federations (including the U.S. AFL–CIO, the British TUC, the French FO, the Italian CISL and the Spanish UGT) seceded and created the rival ICFTU at a conference in London attended by representatives of nearly 48 million members in 53 countries. From the 1950s the ICFTU actively recruited new members from the developing regions of first Asia and subsequently Africa. Following the collapse of Communist party government in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, the Federation's membership has risen steeply from 87 million in 1988 and 100 million in 1992, as trade union federations from former Soviet bloc countries joined the ICFTU. In 1975 former CIA agent Philip Agee revealed in his book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" that the ICFTU was a "Labor center set up and controlled by the CIA to oppose the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)." The ICFTU was formally dissolved on 31 October 2006 when it merged with the World Confederation of Labour (WCL) to form the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Organisation The ICFTU had four regional organisations. APRO covered Asia and the Pacific, AFRO in Africa, and ORIT for the Americas. Until 1969, the ERO covered Europe, but it became increasingly marginal and was dissolved. The ICFTU later maintained close links with the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), which included all ICFTU European affiliates). It also worked closely with many Global Union Federations, which link together national unions from a particular trade or industry at international level. Central to the ICFTU's work was the struggle to defend workers' rights. The ICFTU lobbied for the ratification of the so-called "core labour standards"—eight key conventions of the International Labour Organization concerning freedom of association, the abolition of child labour and forced labour and the elimination of discrimination in the workplace. The ICFTU