The Council of Ministers of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), consisting of the foreign ministers of the member countries, met in Dakar, Senegal, on August 2–11, 1963, under the chairmanship of Mr. Doudou Thiam (Senegal) in pursuance of the decisions taken at the Addis Ababa Conference of African heads of state and government.

When the North Atlantic Treaty was negotiated in the critical days of 1948–1949, it was hoped that this arrangement might be helpful in assisting the contracting parties to build up sufficient strength to deter aggression in Europe and to augment their diplomatic influence so that they could negotiate with the U.S.S.R. from a more advantageous position than they had held since 1945.

The eleventh annual meeting of the Consultative Committee of the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic Development in South and Southeast Asia was held in Jogjakarta, Indonesia, November 11–14, 1959. Besides adopting its eighth annual report, the Committee approved the inclusion of Singapore as a full member and decided to continue the Colombo Plan for another five years from 1961, the date it was scheduled to end, with the understanding that the 1964 meeting of the Consultative Committee would consider a further extension. A communiqu'e issued at the close of the meeting noted evidence of the quickening pace of economic activity, recovery in agricultural production in many countries in the area, and growth in real per capita income. In addition, the Committee observed that the large increase in population was one of the most pressing problems faced by the area and committed itself to seek more information on this problem for inclusion in subsequent reports.

For more than a century intellectuals and statesmen in Central America have kept alive a Bolivarian dream of fashioning a political unity in the isthmian region of the Americas. The formation of the Organization of Central American States in 1951 marked a signal accomplishment along a pathway strewn with many obstacles and previous frustrations. The establishment of this organization added a third regional grouping to the two already present in the Americas— the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Commission. It remains to be seen to what extent the three will be able to work together when questions affecting interests of the hemisphere as a whole arise.

Air transport across national boundaries has increased greatly in scope and intensity since the end of World War II. Although the vast majority of such transport involves private individuals and corporations, governments play a major role in the process. They act as producers, consumers, and regulators of air transport; they have become one of the primary actors in the process. The participation of governments has greatly modified the environment and processes through which carriage is accomplished. Governments have been involved in the establishment of such organizations as die International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a supranational organization in a narrowly limited way, and the International Air Transport Association (IATA), an international association of airlines, many of which are, in fact, owned or controlled by governments.

The annual report of the Executive Directors of the International Monetary Fund for the fiscal year ended April 30, 1960, was transmitted to the Chairman of the Board of Governors on July 8, 1960. In its discussion of the world economy in 1959–1960 the report noted that the year which ended April 30 had been marked by a continual upswing in world industrial activity and an increase in world trade, with industrial production up 10 percent over the recession year of 1958 and the value of world trade increased by 6 percent. During this period of business expansion the leading industrial countries had achieved remarkable success in the delicate task of maintaining a high degree of economic stability, without having to place severe restraint on the forces which helped to sustain the expansion of output and real income. The prices of many industrial materials, especially metals, recovered, but the market for primary products remained weak, and the prices of foodstuffs declined. It became evident that, given the mildness of the postwar recessions, the most pressing problem for primary producing countries was not that of finding compensatory finance in connection with short-run fluctuations in export proceeds, but rather that of establishing a satisfactory long-run trend in the volume and prices of exports and of preventing inflationary pressures from causing imports to expand beyond the available resources of foreign exchange. During the year under consideration the lessening of inflationary pressures and the marked strengthening of the payments structure of the world, along with the increasing supplies of both primary and manufactured products, created a situation in which international competition made itself felt more and more strongly.

This article is devoted to a consideration of the role (during the period 1946–54) of the International Court of Justice within the general context of international institutions existing to facilitate the pacific settlement of international disputes. For the development of international judicial techniques, this period is dominated by a novel, and unwelcome, phenomenon, that of the non-implementation of several of the Court's decisions. In this respect the position of the Court, as a principal organ of the United Nations, is not unique, for, in all its work, the United Nations has had to face the problem of the non-implementation of the resolutions of the principal organs. In making the following observations, the possibility that a decision will be taken in 1955 to convene a General Review Conference, in accordance with Article 109, paragraph 3, of the Charter and Article 69 of the Statute is kept in mind. However, it is not our intention to put forward any specific suggestions for amending either Chapter XIV of the Charter or the Statute. Until a careful and comprehensive review has been made of the working of the provisions of the Charter relating to the Court, and of the Statute, it would be premature to do so.

The fourteenth session of the Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) was held in New Delhi from February 7 through 24, 1961. In his address the President of the Assembly, Dr. Arcot Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, stated that among the many international organizations set up by the UN, WHO occupied a foremost place in its efforts to improve the conditions of millions of people in all parts of the globe. Dr. Mudaliar pointed to the contributions of the WHO regional offices in bringing the work of the organization more directly into contact with the countries concerned. WHO had achieved its most spectacular successes in programs designed not merely to control but to eradicate diseases of which the causative organisms were well known and with respect to which effective steps could be taken—in this regard Dr. Mudaliar mentioned the malaria eradication campaign. Other diseases of a communicable nature—smallpox, cholera, several of the water-borne diseases, and many others carried by insects—could hopefully lend themselves to similar eradication programs. Dr. Mudaliar also referred to the work of WHO in areas of the world stricken by natural or man-made disaster, and in particular to the organization's emergency work in the Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville). As for the future tasks of WHO, the President of the Assembly observed that although tuberculosis had been one of the four diseases that had been given priority by the first WHO Assembly, much still remained to be done to control it; the results of domiciliary treatment carried out in the city of Madras, India, he continued, gave some promise of success in the control and treatment of the disease. Dr. Mudaliar also singled out leprosy as a disease the organization should try to eradicate, and mentioned the problems of mental illness stemming from the stress and strain of modern society as being worthy of attention.

The eleventh session of the General Assembly reconvened on September 10, 1957, to consider further for nine meetings the question of Hungary in the light of the report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary. Prior to the general debate Mr. Shann (Australia), rapporteur of the special committee, pointed out that the members of the committee, as instructed by the Assembly, had directed their attention to the situation created by the intervention of armed forces of the Soviet Union in Hungary on October 24, 1956. Stressing the judicial and fair-minded attitude of the committee, Mr. Shann commented on the converging nature of the evidence it had procured in the testimony of witnesses, documentation provided by Hungarian newspapers and radio reports issued during the uprising, statements of the present Hungarian government, and information provided by governments with diplomatic representatives in Budapest at the time of the occurrence. Speaking on a point of order, the representative of Hungary, subsequently endorsed by the Soviet delegate, asserted that the issue under discussion concerned measures taken by the Hungarian government to crush a counter-revolutionary attack, a domestic issue beyond the competence of an international organization to investigate. He concluded that the establishment of the special committee had been illegal and, therefore, requested the General Assembly to remove the item from the agenda. In accordance with a ruling of the President of the Assembly, however, it was decided to proceed with the debate.

The Palestine Question: Letter dated 1 April 1961 from the Permanent Representative of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan addressed to the President of the Security Council

We attempt to assess the effect of monetary policy in a panel model for 16 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). To answer the question of whether central banks actively create political business cycles, we focus on the short-term interest rate as a proxy for the use of monetary instruments. Our results indicate that central banks do not create political business cycles. This conclusion holds whether or not central banks are independent and whether or not they are constrained by the exchange-rate system in force.

Toward the end of the Administration of Lyndon Johnson it became briefly popular to talk about programs for eliminating poverty at home versus programs for mitigating poverty abroad. But it can also be argued that the two are sides of the proverbial coin and that the experience of rhe one has meaning for the other. The present troubles of the domestic “war on poverty” do not diminish the value of the comparison. If anything, they enhance the need to consider the programs together.

Much of the discussion and study in the field of international organization has long been beset by a sterile encounter between the “uncritical lovers” and the “unloving critics” of formal intergovernmental organizations, of which the UN family is the preeminent example. The former have seen in those institutions and their procedures precursors of a regime of international law, if not of a world government, characterized by greater rationality, order, and cooperation and by less conflict in interstate relations; they have often been mentally fixed on a dominant image of international order, an image whose flaws and other characteristics were well analyzed by John Ruggie several years ago. The latter have seen them largely as shadow plays, at best reflecting and at worst having nothing to do with the power relations among states, which are the real determinants of state behavior in an anarchic system. The split between the two corresponds roughly, if not identically, to another fundamental divide among theorists of international relations, namely, that between idealists and realists.

1948 and 1949 were critical years of decision for many European nations caught in a web of events of such significance and suddenness as to call into question in a matter of months political traditions and concepts whose roots reached well back into die nineteenth century. Faced with the expanding east-west conflict, many countries felt themselves not only endangered and forced to look to their military defenses, but also obliged to choose one side or the other in die developing struggle.

The sixth session of the Council of the Baghdad Pact, meeting on the ministerial level, was held in Karachi January 26–28, 1959. In its communique issued following the meeting the Council reaffirmed the value of the pact for defensive military cooperation as well as economic and technical cooperation in raising living standards. The statement said that the greater part of the meeting had been devoted to a frank exchange of views on the international situation. The Council agreed that more use should be made of regular meetings of the Council of Deputies at the headquarters of the pact for the sake of political solidarity. The offer of the United Kingdom government to equip a new nuclear center for training in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy was welcomed by the Council; it was decided that the center should be located in Teheran. As pointed out by one source, no reference was made in the communique either to the situation in Iraq or to Iraq's association with the pact.

The fifteenth session of the Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) was held in Geneva from May 8 to 25, 1962, under the presidency of Dr. S. V. Kurashov (Minister of Health of the Soviet Union). The Assembly approved an effective working budget of $29,956,000 for 1963, representing an increase of $5,092,200 over the figure for 1962.

The twelfth session of the Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) was held in Geneva, from May 12 to May 29, I959. In his inaugural address, the President of the Assembly, Sir John Charles, spoke of the tasks of the individual worker and of WHO in the field of medical research, stating that the task of the former ended with the presentation of his information, thereby enabling WHO to enter the field of medical research through its contribution—just as important and quite apart from its own research in fields such as tuberculosis and the virus diseases—in the way of coordination and communication. The Director-General, introducing his report on the work of WHO during 1958, observed that, as 1958 had marked the tenth anniversary of the organization, it was natural that the year's activities had been viewed in the light of progress made during the entire decade. He recalled that great strides had been taken in the eradication of malaria and smallpox, but stressed the fact that WHO's goal could not be accomplished without world-wide eradication: as long as malaria or smallpox survived in a single country it constituted a danger for all. He also spoke of the intensified international program of medical research, in which the WHO fellowship program was playing an important role, and of the problem of environmental sanitation, with regard to which WHO had failed in its attempt to arouse public interest.

When M. Schuman first presented his celebrated Plan over two years ago, American views, official and public, were divided between an easy cynicism and a careless rapture. Optimism was stirred by the promise of a unity of European peoples, achieving strength, peace and prosperity through their mutual interests in producing coal and steel. Cynicism amused itself with a vision of a new bureaucracy, exercising new controls through the monster international cartel hidden beneath M. Schuman's diplomatic dress. All groups of opinion, materialistic and democratic in outlook, would have agreed that the Plan, however conceived and dedicated, could not long endure unless it touched the popular heart through raising the standard of living. Here, as elsewhere, Americans looked for Europe's salvation in the joy, excitement, strength and sense of human kinship that is supposed to come from successfully executed achievements in engineering.