Center for Research and Documentation on World Language Problems (CRD) is an international body created to study, document, and educate people about language problems and international relations throughout the world.
CRD was created in 1952 at the initiative of the World Esperanto Association. The Center's European headquarters is in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where its research library, the Hector Hodler Library, is located. It also operates as a unit of the University of Hartford, in the United States.
During its first two decades, CRD was guided by the Croatian jurist Ivo Lapenna. Since 1974, Humphrey Tonkin has played a key role in CRD. Writers and researchers who have collaborated with the Center include: William Auld, Detlev Blanke, Marjorie Boulton, W. Collinson, Probal Dasgupta, Isaj Dratwer, Mark Fettes, Rudolf Haferkorn, Ulrich Lins, François Lo Jacomo, G. F. Makkink, Paul Neergaard, Robert Phillipson, Claude Piron, Juan Regulo Perez, R. Rokicki, Victor Sadler, Klaus Schubert, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Gaston Waringhien, and R. Wood.
CRD supports the publication of the scholarly journal Language Problems and Language Planning.
The organization's newsletter, Informilo por Interlingvistoj, focuses on interlinguistics and is published three times a year. It is edited by Detlev Blanke.
An Annual Bibliography of publications on Esperanto studies and interlinguistics is published as part of a much larger reference work by the US-based Modern Language Association.
Esperanto-studies Conferences (Esperantologiaj Konferencoj) are part of the annual World Esperanto Congresses.
Nitobe Symposia on language policy are organized (often with local or international partners), as are other specialist conferences and seminars, for example at the United Nations. From the Nitobe symposia emerged the Nitobe Centre for Language Democracy which "raises questions about international communication and egalitarian language policy."
CRD also works with the program at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, which offers a 3-year distance diploma program in Interlinguistics. The program, with an international faculty and student body, focuses on international and intercultural communication, planned languages, and Esperanto. In 2008-9, the program celebrated its 10th year.
From 1982 to 1996, together with the United Nations Office of Conference Services, CRD organized an annual conference in New York City. For most of the early years CRD published annual conference reports, with all papers given at the conference in question. The Center now publishes, in cooperation with University Press of America, a series of monographs which includes selected papers from the conferences.
