The second part of the fourth ordinary session of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe was held in Strasbourg, September 15–30, 1952. Mr. Baggiano-Pico (Italy) was elected to the vice-presidency vacated by the death of Mr. Jacini. The President of the assembly (deMenthon, France) announced that an extraordinary session would be held in mid-January 1953, to consider the work of the Ad Hoc Assembly entrusted with the preparation of a draft treaty for a European political community, a decision in which the deputies of the Committee of Ministers later concurred.

The press reported in late October 1960 that an Arab spokesman had announced plans for opening an office of the Arab League in New Delhi, India, in an effort to counteract Israeli overtures toward South Asia. The press report added that the New Delhi office of the Arab League would eventually have under its supervision League branches to be established in Ceylon, Burma, and Indonesia. It was reported that the New Delhi office would concentrate on such League matters as the Arab economic blockade of Israel, the Palestinian refugees, and Arab cooperation in oil and commerce.

The eighteenth session of the International Wheat Council was held in Geneva on November 7,1955, while the United Nations Wheat Conference was meeting. The Council, in connection with consideration of quality differentials during the UN Conference, agreed that information should be furnished by the Secretariat concerning prices as recorded in past transactions under the Agreement and also on current prices in the future. The nineteenth session met in London on July 17, 1956, at which time the Council noted expenditure for office and conference accommodation in Haymarket House for the International Sugar Council and the International Wheat Council, and expressed its approval of various proposals, to be adopted subject to the agreement of the International Sugar Council, for apportioning the expenditure between the two bodies and for arrangements necessary for the discharge of their joint responsibilities in connection with the premises. After this session, a conference of the signatories of the International Wheat Agreement, 1956, met and agreed that the latter should come into force.

The Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) held its 26th session in Geneva from October 25 to November 4, 1960, under the chairmanship of Dr. H. M. Penido. Dr. M. G. Candau, Director-General of WHO, reported on WHO assistance to the Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville) deriving from the request of the Secretary-General and the Security Council in July 1960 that WHO take part in the UN emergency program in the Congo. Twenty-eight WHO staff members had immediately been assigned to the Congo, and within a few weeks 28 medical teams had been sent by 25 national Red Cross, Red Crescent, and Red Lion and Sun Societies as the result of an appeal by WHO to the International Committee of the Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies. These teams made it possible to get a number of hospitals operating again in the cities and in the interior. To meet the long-range medical needs of the Congo where there were as yet no native doctors, assistants medicaux were selected for further training and given WHO fellowships to attend medical schools so that they might become fully qualified doctors. To cope with the crisis the UN guaranteed the funds necessary for WHO to engage 130 health workers of all categories to work for the Congolese government. Dr. Candau concluded his report by emphasizing that, if political stability and normal administration could be effectuated, the medical problems of the Congo would not be difficult to solve; the preventative work carried out under the Belgian administration could then be resumed and the threat of the spread of disease effectively averted.

Eight years ago the United States set out, at the request of American editors and press associations, to increase the amount of information available to its own and other peoples through international compacts. What began as a project for lowering barriers to the gathering and transmission of news soon developed into an effort to assure freedom of information and expression to all peoples in the belief that without such basic freedoms there can be no other enduring freedoms and very little progress towards the good life.

A significant aspect of post-Stalinist Soviet foreign policy has been the flexibility and imaginativeness with which it has maneuvered in under-developed areas, particularly in the non-aligned nations of Southern Asia—Afghanistan, Burma, Ceylon, India, and Indonesia. This innovation involved a fundamental shift in tactics and must now be considered a prominent feature of Soviet foreign policy. The previous neglect of South Asia was occasioned by a preoccupation with the sovietization of eastern Europe, the imperatives of postwar reconstruction and economic expansion, and the rise of communist China; it may also be attributed, in important measure, to Stalin's underestimation of the role which the area might play in enhancing the international position of the Soviet Union. This aspect of Stalinism is now over. Since 1953, Soviet leadership has pushed its interests in South Asia with skill and vigor, both on a bilateral basis and within the framework of international organizations. Of late, the bilateral ventures have received careful attention in this country. Less systematic attention, however, has been devoted to Soviet behavior in international economic organizations. In this respect, the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) affords an excellent opportunity to investigate this phase of Soviet political behavior.

The International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) was notified in Demember 1962 that, due to the Chinese invasion and the consequent national emergency, India could not host the fifteenth Universal Postal Congress which had been scheduled to open on March 1, 1963, in New Delhi. On January 17, 1963, the Director of the International Bureau, Mr. Weber, received from the Austrian government an official invitation to hold the fifteenth Congress in Vienna in June 1964.

The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereinafter referred to as the Convention), signed in Rome on November 4, 1950 entered into force on September 3, 1953. It provides in Article 19 for the establishment of two organs whose task it is “to ensure the observance of the engagements undertaken” in the Convention by the contracting parties: a European Commission of Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as the Commission) and a European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as the Court).

This article presents both a history and an administrative analysis of the United Nations Volunteers, an international organization established by a General Assembly resolution in December 1970. The hope that the new organization would presage a new era of multinational volunteerism has proven groundless. In seeking to explain the ineffectiveness of the UN Volunteers, I look inside the organization and find that it has little or no control over its six principal functions. This extreme decentralization of responsibility is then explained not by a static description of the institutional but by focusing on the dynamic process by which state and transnational actors exercised influence during the different stages of the organization's establishment and development. Those actors whose autonomy was most jeopardized by a new volunteer organization were most active in defining and limiting the scope of its operations. The relative lobbying advantages of state and transnational actors meshed with bureaucratic and budgetary constraints to ensure an enfeebled organization.

In recent years efforts to account for changing patterns of alliance relationships have incorporated a growing number of insights and propositions derived from the analysis of “global interdependence.” These efforts have been complicated, on the one hand, by a lack of precision in providing operational definitions of the independent variables and, at a more fundamental level, by considerable ambiguity with respect to those types of changes which may be best explained in terms of these variables.

An analysis of Washington-Bonn relations reveals a reasonably coherent pattern of changes with regard to four specific aspects of the relationship: 1) the nature of the alliance agenda; 2) the structure of the relationship (i.e. the characteristic distribution of influence between alliance partners); 3) the operative procedural norms which regulate bilateral bargaining and negotiation; and 4) the institutional arrangements which have evolved for the coordination of alliance policy.

In George Orwell's Animal Farm all that finally remains of the animals' plans for a brave new world, a farm without Farmer Jones, a farm to be run by and for the animals themselves, is the slogan “Four feet good; two feet bad.” As one reads the reports from Lake Success and Flushing Meadows one is tempted to say of the brave new world projected five years ago at San Francisco, the world of sovereign equality and greatpower unanimity, that all that is left is the slogan “United Nations good; power politics bad.” But here the analogy ends; for there is no agreement in the United Nations as to who is being good by supporting the spirit and the language of the Charter and who is being bad by playing power politics.

Recognizing the determination of the United Nations to create conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations,

TheParties to this Charter undertake in the fields of trade and employment to co-operate with one another and with the United Nations

For the Purpose of

Realizing the aims set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the attainment of the higher standards of living, full employment and conditions of economic and social progress and development, envisaged in Article 55 of that Charter.

During September and October 1958 the Permanent Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) discussed the question of Cyprus. On September 24, the Council heard M. Paul-Henri Spaak, Secretary-General of NATO, describe his visit on September 23 to Athens, where he had discussed problems connected with Cyprus with the Greek Prime Minister. His consultation had centered on a United Kingdom plan whereby there would be a seven-year partnership in Cyprus to provide a quiet atmosphere and proper conditions under which to work out a final solution; the plan had received the support of the Turks but not of the Greeks. M. Spaak proposed to the Council the calling of a conference in which the Greek, Turkish, and United Kingdom governments and representatives of the Greek Cypriot and Tyrkish Cypriot communities would take part.

The Assembly of Western European Union (WEU) held the second part of its fourth session in Paris from December 17 to 20, 1958, under the presidency of Sir James Hutchison (British Conservative). In the course of the session, the Assembly was addressed by the Foreign Ministers of Belgium, the German Federal Republic, and the Netherlands, by the United Kingdom Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, by the Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (M. Spaak), and by the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (General Norstad). The Supreme Commander considered that if a demilitarized zone was established in Europe, as suggested in the Rapacki Plan, his task would become impossible; M. Spaak also had little faith in a denuclearized zone, in an era of intercontinental missiles.

Under the terms of the extension of the time limit for the signing of the Torquay Protocol, granted by the sixth session of the Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the protocol was signed by the United Kingdom on December 19 and by Denmark on December 21, 1951, bringing to 31 the number of signatories. On December 27, Brazil notified the Secretary-General of the United Nations (Lie) of its intention to apply the tariff concessions of the Annecy Protocol and on December 31, 1951, India signed the First Protocol of Rectifications and Modifications and the First Protocol of Supplementary Concessions to GATT. The number of the contracting parties to GATT was increased to 34 with the accession, during the sixth session, of Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany, Peru and Turkey.

On September 23, 1955, Pakistan announced its formal adherence to the alliance formed on February 24 by Iraqand Turkey, and adhered to by the United Kingdom on April 5 (Baghdad Pact). On October 11, the government of Iran announced its intention to adhere to the Pact; following parliamentary approval of the decision, Iran formallyadhered on November 3. Both before and after Iran's formal adherence to the Pact, the Soviet Union, according to press reports, protested strongly. In a note of October 12, the Soviet government declared that the accession of Iran was incompatible with the interests of consolidating peace and security in the near and middle east, and contradicted certain treaty obligations of Iran with respect to the Soviet Union. In a subsequent note, the Soviet Union repeated its protest, alleging that Iran's adherence to the Pact “inflicted serious damage” to relations between Iran and the Soviet Union, and that Iran would have to bear the full consequencesof joining. In a reply to the earlier Soviet note, Iran had declared that its object in adhering to the Pactwas the consolidation of peace and security in the middle east; the Pact was for defensive purposes, and Iran'sadherence should not mar Iranian-Soviet friendly relations, nor did it conflict with the terms of existing agreements between Iran and the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, both the United States and United Kingdom had formally welcomed Iran's decision.

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.

During the period from December 22, 1955 to February 21, 1956, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development made two loans in two countries. A loan of $4.2 million to Honduras was announced by the Bank on December 22, to enable a highway maintenance organization to be set up and begin operations; the loan was also to finance preliminary engineering studies for the improvement and new construction of various sections of two of the country's important highways. The Bank of America of San Francisco, the American Security and Trust Company of Washington, D. C. and the Whitney National Bank of New Orleans participated in the loan, without the Bank's guarantee, to the extent of $872,000. The total cost of the project was estimated to be equivalent to $8 million The loan was for a period of nine years at an annual interest of 4½ percent, including the Bank's commission; amortization was to begin on December 1, 1957. This was the first Bank loan to Honduras.