Organized international intervention in colonial affairs has never found favor in the eyes of the European colonial powers. It did not at San Francisco when they sought to restrict the United Nations role in non-self-governing territories. It was not well received when the Security Council dealt with Indonesia nor were its results favored when the General Assembly disposed of the Italian empire. It does not please them, now, when the focus of public attention is on the political, economic, and social development of the colonies.

By the Moscow Declaration of 1943 the Soviet, British and United States governments pledged their efforts to reestablish a “free and independent Austria” after the the defeat of Germany. In the spring of 1950, five years after the liberation of Austria from German forces and Nazi rule, this pledge, like many other war-time declarations of aims, remained unfulfilled and the Austrians were still asking, as a Viennese witticism put it, when they would be “liberated from their liberators.”

The security provisions of the contemporary system of international organization are based upon the principle of collective security. As it was originally stated in Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, “should any Member of the League resort to war in disregard of its covenants…it shall ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war against all other Members of the League.” On this principle of solidarity are equally founded the concepts of collective security included within the Charter of the United Nations.

Seven Commonwealth countries – the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and pakistan – are now members of the United Nations. As this widely representative international organization celebrates its fifth anniversary, it is worth considering how the members of an older well-tried international association, the General Assembly in dealing with international political issues. Broadly speaking, the questions of significance are: How far is the fact of membership in the commonwealth recognized within the United Nations, e. g. in elections to its organs? How do Commonwealth countries act when one of their own members is under attack, as South Africa has been over South West Africa, or in the even more difficult circumstances when two of their members openly air a dispute in the international forum, as over the position of Indians in South Africa, or over Jammu and Kashmir? How do they act in relation to issues of general international concern like Indonesia and Palestine? And lastly, how far do the countries of the Commonwealth retain their traditionally intimate collaboration within this larger and more formal organization? Is there any pattern here which will help to explain what kind of international association the Commonwealth now is, as well as what role its members play in the United Nations?

The final report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East was submitted to the Conciliation Commission for Palestine on December 18, 1949. The mission's interim report, dealing with immediate aid and work relief for Palestinian refugees, had been submitted to the General Assembly in November. The final report, while not dealing directly with the refugee problem pointed out that its solution was inseparable from the general middle eastern problems of poverty, unemployment and hunger, and referred to the economic development possible in the middle eastern area, providing that peaceful intraregional cooperation could take place.

This issue covers the work of the Security Council from the 458th meeting on December 29, 1949 to the 470th meeting on March 14, 1950. From the 460th meeting on the work of the Council was conducted without the participation ofthe Soviet Union.

The Economic and Social Council met at Lake Success for its tenth session from February 7 to March 6, 1950, to consider a provisional agenda of 41 items, in addition to considering a large number of reports from its subsidiary bodies, the Council was to review the general world economic situation, discuss the economic development of under-developed countries, including methods of financing, consider Council relations with inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations, and survey forced labor and the problem of trade union rights and freedom of association. Hernan Santa Cruz (Chile) was elected to the presidency of the Council by acclamation.

The second special session of the Trusteeship Council was held at Lake Success from December 8 to 20, 1949 to consider two items: negotiation with Italy of a draft trusteeship agreement for placing Italian Somaliland under the international trusteeship system, in accordance with the resolution of November 21, 1949 of the fourth session of the General Assembly, and completion of a draft statute for the administration of Jerusalem as an international enclave, in accordance with the decision of the General Assembly of December 16, 1949.

Establishment of a Publications Board: In order to insure maximum efficiency and economy in the use of equipment, staff and funds of the Secretariat for the publication of United Nations documents, it was announced in December 1949 that a publications board had been established. It was to be composed of representatives of the executive office of the Secretary-General, the Department of Public Information, Conference and General Services and Administrative and Financial Services. The representative of the executive office of the Secretary-General was to be chairman of the board, which would be directly responsible to the Secretary-General. Duties of the board included: 1) approving the estimates for contractual printing for inclusion in the budget estimates for each financial year, 2) establishing annually the publications program of the United Nations and issuing all necessary directives to insure control of that program, 3) determining policies within the Secretariat to govern all phases of the preparation, production and distribution of documents, and 4) reporting to the Secretary-General on its work at least once a year.

Corfu Channel Case: At a public hearing on December 15, 1949 the International Court of Justice gave judgment in the last stage of the Corfu Channel Case between the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of Albania. The two experts appointed by the Court to examine the figures and estimates of damages produced by the United Kingdom had reported on December 2, 1949 and had been further questioned by the judges. Because the Albanian government had failed to defend its case, procedure in default of appearance was brought into operation. After finding that the figures given by the United Kingdom government for the replacement of the destroyer Saumarez and for the damage sustained by the destroyer Volage were an exact and reasonable estimate of the damage sustained, and after finding the documents produced by the United Kingdom regarding deaths and injuries of naval personnel sufficient proof, the Court gave judgment in favor of the claim of the United Kingdom and ordered Albania to pay that country a total compensation of £843,947.

The FAO Council met for one week beginning November 14, 1949, preparatory to the fifth annual Conference to review the “State of Food and Agriculture 1949” and reports of pre-Conference meetings of governments of the four world regions. The report of the Director-General (Dodd) on world commodity problems was also considered.

On January 16, 1950 the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development reported a net income for the six months ending December 31, 1949 of $6,672,667, as compared with $4,804,057 for the first six months of the preceding fiscal year. Gross income, exclusive of $2,709,416 transferred to the special reserve, amounted to $12,268,685, as compared with $10,291,345. Total administrative expenses for the six months ending December 31, 1949 were $2,171,506, as compared with $2,062,840 for the same period the preceding year. Disbursements on loans during the latter six months of 1949 amounted to $40,721,716, increasing the total to $567,012,730, as of December 31. During this same period the Bank made loan commitments of $94,045,000, increasing the total since the Bank began operations to $743,906,983, after making allowance for the cancellation by Luxembourg of $238,017 from its original loan contract of August 28, 1947.

Continuing its eighth session, which opened on September 6, 1949, the Council on September 23 noted that no part of Annex 8 of the Chicago Convention (Airworthiness of Aircraft) had been disapproved by a majority of the contracting states and accordingly declared the Annex operative as of September 1, 1949. On November 16, the Council adopted amendments to Annex 4 (Aeronautical Charts) and established September 1, 1950, as the date for implementation of the amendments, permitting contracting states to register disapproval until June 1, 1950. With regard to the Chicago Convention itself, the Council decided that it would 1) recommend no amendments to the 1950 Assembly, 2) recommend that the 1950 Assembly adopt no amendments to the Convention, and 3) proceed to study the whole problem of amendments with a view to reporting to the 1950 Assembly on principles, methods and procedures for amendment. The Council, in the course of its eighth session, approved the recommendations of the Air Navigation Commission on the Final Report of the Technical Committee of the 2nd Conference on ICAO North Atlantic Ocean Stations and on the recommendations of the North Pacific Regional Air Navigation Meeting Relating to Ocean Stations. Before concluding the session on December 13, the Council took the following action: 1) allocated to Belgium the contributions of Ireland and Portugal toward the North Atlantic ocean stations for the fiscal year 1949; authorized the Secretariat to proceed with the preparation and publication of a lexicon of aeronautical terms including definitions contained in the Convention, Assembly resolution and Annexes, terms for which trilingual equivalents had been prepared together with definitions for such terms, and terms considered by the Secretariat to be necessary to make the lexicon reasonably complete;

Meeting in its 110th session in Mysore, India, the ILO Governing Body completed action on a number of projects designed to extend, in cooperation with the United Nations, technical assistance to economically under-developed areas. The Governing Body also authorized the Director-General (Morse) to raise with the Trusteeship Council a number of questions arising out of the reports of the administering authorities and relating to the applicability of ILO conventions and recommendations in trust territories. At the same session, the Governing Body approved procedures for the establishment of a nine-member commission to examine infringements of trade union rights, the first international fact-finding and conciliation commission on freedom of association. The members of the commission, to be chosen “for their personal qualifications” and expected to “discharge their duties with complete independence,” were to be selected by the Governing Body at its 111th session, to convene in Geneva on March 8, 1950. The commission was created in accordance with a request of the Economic and Social Council of August 1949 and was to function on behalf of the United Nations as well as the ILO. The Governing Body defined the commission as “essentially a fact-finding body” which was also authorized to consult with the government or governments concerned “with a view to securing the adjustment of difficulties by agreement.” Complaints alleging the violation of trade union rights were to be referred to the commission by either the Governing Body or the International Labor Conference.

During the month of November 1949 the International Monetary Fund sold $22.5 million to Brazil, and the government of Costa Rica repurchased $1.25 million. The Fund concurred in a change proposed by the United Kingdom government in the par value of the British Honduras dollar effective December 31, 1949. In terms of gold and in terms of the United States dollar of the weight and fineness in effect on July 1, 1944, the parities for the British Honduras dollar were: 0.622 grams of fine gold per British Honduras dollar and 1.429 British Honduras dollars per United States dollar.

The semi-annual report of the Director-General (Kingsley) covering the period from July 1, 1949 to December 31, 1949 stated that during the second half of 1949 the organization had re-established refugees at an average rate of about 27,800 per month. By December 31, 1949 the total had reached 758,923, of whom 68,778 had been repatriated and 690,145 had resettled in new countries. Late in the year, however, severe reductions in the United States and Australian programs intervened, so that in December only 19,043 were resettled. The last six months of 1949 had emphasized programs implementing decisions of the General Council to extend the life of IRO into 1951, establish a series of date lines in order to keep the organization's responsibilities within the limits of the time and funds at its disposal, intensify and broaden the counselling program to obtain as complete and accurate view possible of the task remaining and to budget up to $22,000,000 for use in solving the “hard core” problem.

On October 31, 1949, the Executive Secretary of ITO (Wyndam-White) circulated to the governments signatory to the Havana Charter a questionnaire as to the dates upon which the government concerned expected to submit the ITO charter to its legislature for ratification, and by which the ratification process was expected to be completed. As of that date, only two signatories, Australia and Liberia, had completed ratification. Of the governments which had responded to a previous inquiry of the Executive Secretary, four (United States, Denmark, France and Norway) had submitted the charter and three others announced their intention of doing so “soon.”

Meeting in December 1949 for its eighteenth session, the Executive Board of UNESCO elected Sir John Maud (United Kingdom) as its chairman for 1949–50. The Board devoted most of its attention to the work of the fifth General Conference which it decided to convene in Florence, Italy, on May 22, 1950; the chief task of the Conference would be to consider the “streamlined” program of operations approved by the fourth General Conference in Paris in 1949. The Board decided to abandon the practice of an opening general debate adopted at the Paris conference and to substitute a general discussion of the Director-General's report, thus permitting the delegations to go fully into the aims and policies of the organization. In preparation for the conference, the Executive Board instructed its program committee to prepare a program of three parts: 1) a basic program of operations, 2) a list of methods by which the program could be implemented, and 3) a work plan for 1951. At the same session, the Board authorized the Director-General to establish liaison with the Council of Europe as a part of UNESCO's program of cooperation with regional organizations. In view of the fact that the Council had created and intended to create no machinery for educational and cultural purposes, the Executive Board instructed the Director-General to examine the possibility of concluding an agreement with the Council in order that UNESCO might carry out certain phases of educational and cultural activity on its behalf.

The fifth session of the WHO Executive Board was held in Geneva from January 16 to February 2, 1950. Long-range plans for WHO operations were outlined, and the Board recommended that the 1951 program should continue at the same general level, with primary emphasis on strengthening national health administrations and on control work against malaria, tuberculosis, and venereal disease. Development of services in the fields of maternal and child health, mental health, nutrition, sanitation, health statistics and medical training facilities would also be stressed.

On March 23, 1950, the Convention of the World Meteorological Organization came into force. The convention had been opened for signature in Washington on October 11, 1947.

The convention provided for the creation of a World Meteorological Organization as a specialized agency of the United Nations; its basic objectives would be to coordinate, standardize, and improve international meteorological activities, and to encourage “an efficient exchange of weather and other meteorological information in the aid of human activities.” The new group was to continue the activities of the semi-official International Meteorological Organization, which had functioned since 1878.