The World Blind Union is an organisation of blind

Blindness

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...

 and partially sighted

Visual impairment

Visual impairment is vision loss to such a degree as to qualify as an additional support need through a significant limitation of visual capability resulting from either disease, trauma, or congenital or degenerative conditions that cannot be corrected by conventional means, such as refractive...

 persons of the world, representing 180 million blind and visually impaired persons from about 600 different organisations in 158 countries.

The WBU is a non-political, non-religious, non-governmental and non-profit-making organisation.

WBU has consultative status within the UN Agencies and ECOSOC

United Nations Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations constitutes one of the six principal organs of the United Nations and it is responsible for the coordination of the economic, social and related work of 14 UN specialized agencies, its functional commissions and five regional commissions...

.

WBU is divided into 6 regions with constitutions of their own. Together the regions form the World Blind Union.

The hallmarks of WBU are openness and democracy. All countries fulfilling the conditions laid down in the WBU Constitution are welcomed as members with the right to express their opinions and points of view freely and without fear of recrimination.