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The Financial Experience of UNRRA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2017
Extract
As the first working agency of the United Nations, already almost two years old, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration is of special interest to students of international organization. Despite its unique features it has already grappled with many of the problems that will confront all future international organizations. Its financial experience is particularly interesting because all such organizations, whether dealing with political, judicial, or economic subject matter, have very early in their history to go through the difficult process of collecting funds from resolutely sovereign-minded member governments. The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, in view of its coordinating authority over all international specialized agencies, cannot fail to be guided by the results of the financial experience of UNRRA. The International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development can be expected to be especially attentive to UNRRA's experience because, like it, they require the collection of vast funds for more than administrative purposes.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © American Society of International Law 1945
References
1 See UNRRA—Organization, Aims, Progress, p. 3, put out as a public information pamphlet by the agency.
2 These include Belgium, China, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Greece, Luxembourg, France, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, U.S.S.R., and Yugoslavia.
3 First Session of the Council of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, Selected Documents, Resolution No. 14, Section 4, p. 45.
4 Same, p. 45.
5 Same, p. 45.
6 Same, p. 46.
7 Same, p. 45.
8 Same, p. 47.
9 Journal, Second Session of the Council, Volume II, No. 11, p. 145.
10 Any other relief aid required by Germany will be a responsibility of the occupying military officials. Prime Minister Churchill has promised that food will be given to the German and Austrian people. See Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 1940, quoted by Allen G. B. Fisher, “The Constitution and Work of UNRRA,” International Affairs, July 1944, p. 328.
11 Minor provisions in the Financial Plan cover contributions to UNRRA by non-member countries and private organizations, auditing, budgetary, and other matters that need not be discussed here. For obvious political reasons, neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland have apparently preferred to extend relief assistance directly to the relief-receiving countries rather than via UNRRA, as the agency invites them to do. According to unpublished information given this author by UNRRA's Public Information Director, private individuals and agencies have contributed $68,868 to UNRRA up to April 30, 1945. Their direct expenditures for relief abroad have been much larger.
12 Second Report to Congress on United States Participation in Operations of UNRRA, December 31, 1944, pp. 16 and 17.
13 This budget is larger than for any other international organization established to date. The top annual figure for the League of Nations, including the International Labour Organization and the Permanent Court of International Justice, was never more than about $7,400,000, for the fiscal year of 1938.
14 Discussion of Soviet-UNRRA political relations is scanty. See the following: Christian Science Monitor, January 27, 1945, p. 14; New York Herald Tribune, March 24, 1945, p. 7; and New York Times, April 5, 1945, p. 14. UNRRA's press release No. 173 reports that $800,000 of Russia's administrative liability was in process of transfer on June 13, 1945.
15 According to information given me by the Public Information Director, these countries are Australia, New Zealand, Venezuela, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Haiti, and India. Not all of these countries made their full sums available for 1945. Costa Rica is mistakenly omitted from the Public Information Director's list; it agreed to be responsible for its operating contribution on April 10, 1945. See Foreign Commerce Weekly, May 19, 1945, p. 50, and Monthly Review of UNRRA, May 1945, p. 12.
16 Only 450 million dollars was actually appropriated and the remaining 350 million dollars held for transfer under the Lend-Lease Act and supplementary acts, subject to the approval of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Foreign Economic Administrator. These sums do not measure the full contribution of the United States Government for relief and assistance abroad. About 1 billion dollars is expected to be spent for civilian supplies by the United States military command for foreign distribution; about 562 million dollars has already been appropriated. However, it is not known what portion of this amount, as well as of the funds spent through UNRRA, will be returned by financially-well-eituated governments. Britain, Canada, and Russia will also have non-UNRRA relief expenses in foreign countries. See Report of the Diredor-Oeneral to the Second Session of the Council, September 1944, pp. 10-11.
17 The ten Latin American countries are Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. According to UNRRA press release No. 173, Mexico's appropriation for its operating contribution had been effected by July 24, 1945.
18 Iceland made some kind of a record when it gave over its administrative contribution and part of its operating sum less than six weeks after the inauguration of UNRRA on November 9, 1943. This was possible because the Icelandic Parliament approved the country's participation in UNRRA on October 19, before the Agreement was signed. Early action is apparently possible.
19 Uruguay is discussed in UNRRA's official reports, Chile in the Christian Science Monitor, December 16, 1944, p. 5, and Paraguay and Ecuador in the New York Times, January 7, 1945, p. 12, This latter dispatch claims that Brazil's contribution and Colombia's planned contribution surpass the 1 per cent formula.
20 Public Law 382, Section 201—78th Congress, Title II.
21 Of over a million long tons of relief supplies shipped or slated for shipment by June 30, 1945, amounting to about a quarter of a billion dollars, 550,000 tons have been bought from Allied military authorities. See Journal of Commerce, May 28, 1945, p. 16.
22 The inclusion of the Netherlands in this group is somewhat doubtful because of widespread flooding and military damage. See “The Second Session of the Council of UNRRA,“ by Edward G. Miller, Jr., in The Department of State Bulletin, October 29, 1944, p. 503.
23 The official Chinese delegate to the UNRRA Council has tentatively announced that minimum Chinese relief and rehabilitation needs would amount to $3,439,000,000 for the first year after liberation, of which UNRRA would be requested to meet about 1.3 million dollars, or 37 per cent. See the Monthly Review of UNRRA, October 1944, p. 7.
24 The charter of the United Nations suspends a delinquent country's voting privileges in the General Assembly. Article 19 reads: “A member which is in arrears in the payments of its financial contributions to the organization shall have no vote if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years. The General Assembly may, nevertheless, permit such a member to vote if it is satisfied that the failure to pay is due to conditions beyond the control of the member.“
25 Public Law 267, Section 5—78th Congress.
26 Public Law 171, Section 5e—79th Congress.