The organization was established under the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA), which was sponsored by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and was ratified in 1985.[2] Its mandate was renewed by the International Tropical Timber Agreement, 1994 and again by the International Tropical Timber Agreement, 2006, which aims to promote sustainable management and legal harvesting of forests that produce tropical timber, and to promote expansion and diversification of international timber trade from these forests.[3]