The United Nations provides the setting for the expression and carrying out of United States policies on a wide range of subjects of international concern. This article is about how those policies are formulated and expressed in UN organs.

The World Bank announced on March 14, 1963, that it had made a loan equivalent to $13,250,000 to help finance a program to rehabilitate and modernize the two principal railway systems in Peru. The railways were an important element in Peru's transportation system, particularly for the movement of minerals, petroleum, and bulk merchandise, and their efficient operation was essential to the country's economic growth. Under the program, diesel locomotives would be put into use, carrying capacity increased, and tracks improved, thereby enabling the railways to reduce transportation costs and to provide more efficient service. The loan was made to the Peruvian Corporation Limited, a private company which owned and operated the railways, and was guaranteed by the Peruvian government. The total cost of the program, which was scheduled for completion in 1965, was estimated at the equivalent of $21.3 million, of which $19.5 million was in foreign exchange and would be covered in part by the Bank loan. The loan was for a term of sixteen years, and amortization was to begin in December 1967.

World food institutions include the whole range of policies and programs that affect the production and distribution of food, including national programs as well as those of an international nature. Trade liberalization, both international and intranational, can contribute significantly to the expansion of food production. Unfortunately, recent suggestions, such as the Integrated Programme for Commodities, will result in increased trade barriers, a reduction in specialization of production and increased price instability. If there are appropriate policies—adequate incentives for farmers, increased support for research and available supplies of modern farm inputs—food production in the developing economies can be increased more rapidly than population. Food security in the developing countries could be increased significantly by a grain insurance program that supplied grain to meet all production shortfalls below trend level production. Such a program should be the major source of food aid to the developing countries in order to avoid disincentives to local farmers.

On July 30, 1962, the government of Syria presented a formal complaint against alleged United Arab Republic interference in its internal affairs to Abdul Khaliq Hassouna, Secretary-General of the Arab League. The Secretary-General at Syria's request said he would start preparations for holding an extraordinary meeting of the League's Council to discuss the complaint, but it would take at least five days.

Regulation of the exploitation of seabed minerals has to be considered in terms both of the technical nature of the operations and of the requirements of the supervisory body. The major issue, however, has been “Who May Exploit the Area?”. Different approaches to this question have been taken by the leading industrialized powers and by the Group of 77. Particular difficulties have arisen over: 1) the extent of the discretion to be exercised by the International Seabed Authority and the security of access of individual operators; 2) the way in which the Authority might itself engage in direct operations through an “Enterprise”; 3) the protection to be given to land-based producers against adverse consequences of seabed exploitation; and 4), the decision-making procedures of the Authority. Future events are hard to predict; but failure to produce a generally acceptable treaty could lead to significant conflict over the international seabed in the years ahead.

Traditionally relations between nations, including Canada and the United States, have been analyzed in terms of the interaction between the executive branches of the two governments. This approach used to reflect relatively accurately the actual state of affairs. It is still broadly consistent with the constitutional allocation of powers, particularly in Canada. While the president of the United States must seek congressional action in order to declare war and Senate action to ratify treaties and to confirm ambassadorial appointments, these powers in Canada fall within the prerogatives of the crown, and constitutionally no parliamentary approval for decisions by the executive branch in any of these areas is required.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is the major technical assistance fund in the UN family of institutions. By purchasing goods and services, it affects developed and developing states alike. As well as distributing assistance, UNDP attempts to stimulate follow-up investment and procures goods and services from member states. UNDP project expenditures are correlated with public and private follow-up investment, but the relationship is rather weak. On the procurement side, developed states receive subcontracts, equipment orders, and fellowship students in direct relationship to their contributions to UNDP, and developing states attract employment possibilities for their nationals as UNDP experts in direct relationship to their contributions. Developed states receive the largest returns from UNDP procurement. Providing multilateral assistance is UNDP's primary activity, but the purchase of equipment, the generation of investment opportunities, and the employment of experts provide economic incentives for both developing and developed states.

At the Second Part of the first Session, the General Assembly completed the steps required by the Charter for the establishment of its last remaining organ, the Trusteeship Council, by accepting trusteeship agreements for eight territories formerly held under mandate. The territories brought under trusteeship and their administering authorities are: New Guinea (Australia), Ruanda-Urundi (Belgium), the Cameroons (France and Great Britain), Togoland (France and Great Britain), and Western Samoa (New Zealand).

The fifth session of the Metal Trades Committee of the International Labor Organization (ILO) was held in Geneva from October 25 to November 5, 1954, under the chairmanship of Mr. E. C. Puig (Mexico). Representatives of 20 countries and the United Nations, as well as observers from a number of non-governmental organizations, attended the session, at which the following three agenda items were considered: 1) a general report, dealing with steps taken by various countries and the ILO Office in the light of actions of previous sessions of the Committee and recent events and developments in the metal trades; 2) regularization of production and employment at a high level in the metal trades; and 3) methods of labor-management cooperation in metal-working plants. In the matter of labor-management relations, the Committee adopted, by 91 votes to 11, a memorandum concerning practical methods of labor-management cooperation, intended as a guide to employers and workers, which outlined matters suitable for joint consultation and suggested some guiding organizational principles and methods of cooperation. In the memorandum on the regularization of production and employment, adopted by the Committee by 71 votes to 33 with 3 abstentions, the general principles set forth were that 1) the proper goals of social, political and economic policy were to achieve full employment and to ensure steady progress towards higher living standards, 2) the benefits of higher productivity in the metal trades should be distributed equally among labor, capital and consumers, 3) sharp economic crises resulting in widespread unemployment were avoidable through appropriate action, and 4) sustained full employment could be built only on a solid foundation of adequate consumer purchasing power, of steadily rising living standards, of greater economic stability, especially for the lower-income groups, and of rapid economic development of under-developed countries.

The Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held its 55th session in Paris, from November 23, 1959, to December 5, 1959. Under the heading, Execution of the Program, the Board decided, inter alia: 1) to approve the list of invitations to the 23d International Conference on Public Education; 2) to authorize the Director-General to convene, in 1960, a meeting of representatives to the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, if hedeemed it appropriate to do so; 3) to invite member states to submit names of great personalities and to call attention to historic events in the field of education, science, and culture which they planned to commemorate, in conformity with a decision adopted at its previous session; 4) to extend assistance to the governments of the United Arab Republic and the Sudan to obtain, through the Organization, largescale international assistance for safeguarding the monuments of Nubia which were in danger of disappearing, and, further, to authorize the Secretary-General, among other things, to set up an international committee to assist him in the organization of a world-wide campaign designed to secure contributions for whatever international action was to be undertaken; 5) to approve the list of invitations to the 1960 World Conference on Adult Education; and 6) to recommend to the General Conference the inclusion among the activities to be carried out in the 1961–1962 period of an international conference to study ways of improving international transmission of news, to be convened in Havana, Cuba.

The General Assembly held its twentieth session, comprising the 1332nd–1408th plenary meetings, at UN Headquarters from September 21 to December 21, 1965. Part of the Assembly's proceedings were summarized in the Spring 1966 issue of International Organization and the remainder follows below.

In confronting any question about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the late sixties one is uncomfortably aware of insistent questioning as to how much it all matters. Is NATO a device to meet horizontal challenges when the new challenges are vertical? Is “the West,” whatever that is, defending the Elbe when the struggle is going on in its own streets? These challenges from within are not the subversion directed from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which NATO subcommittees had always taken into their calculations. Insofar as they are Communist in inspiration at all, they are the consequences of the disruption of the Muscovite International. What makes them serious is that they have their roots in Western society itself. Perhaps the West has been too much preoccupied with interstate relations and the creation of superstates when the essential problems are internal—not isolated national phenomena certainly, but eruptions which ignore boundaries, in some cases intensely nationalistic and at the same time dedicated to removing the barriers between peoples. The new rebels are deeply skeptical of that “way of life” the West has insisted it was defending through NATO and believe nothing could be more irrelevant than a military alliance to defend it.

Nearly thirty-five years have gone by since the signing of the Treaty of Versailles brought into existence a new international entity, the territory under mandate or trusteeship. Histories of the peace negotiation, depending on the prejudices or the personalities of their authors, represented the system as the creation of a group of impractical idealists or as the ultimate Surrender to militant colonialism. Only recently has it proved feasible to examine much of the evidence, to discover the effects of the system on the territories themselves, and to draw a few conclusions.

The 30th annual report of the Bank for International Settlements, covering the financial year from April 1, 1959, to March 31, 1960, was submitted to the annual general meeting of the Bank held in Basle on June 13, 1960.1 In his introduction, the General Manager of the Bank, Mr. Guillaume Guindey, reported that the net profit for the thirtieth financial year had amounted to 15,314,716 gold francs, compared with 9,550,894 gold francs for the preceding year. In view of these very favorable results, the Board of Directors of the Bank had recommended the extraordinary distribution of 42.50 gold francs per share, in addition to the regular dividend of 37.50 gold francs per share; thus the total distribution for this year would amount to 80 gold francs, payable in Swiss francs in the amount of 114.30 Swiss francs per share.

The present strains on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance have far-reaching implications for members as well as nonmembers. In the current Scandinavian debate on security the year 1969 has become almost a magic number. In Norway there has even been talk of a national referendum on whether to continue membership in NATO. While recent polls show a majority in favor of the alliance, the margin is not large enough to preclude a change during the next three years. Parties, politicians, and pressure groups are already bracing themselves for a major campaign.

It is characteristic of our time that its most profound problems are global, involving all men, yet the nations into which men have divided themselves have never been as numerous nor as sharply diverse. A hundred years ago poverty was the common lot of most human beings; today we find two sets of nations staring at each other across the oceans, one rich and one poor, with a growing gap between them. The technological revolution has continuously improved the levels of living in the rich countries; in the poor ones its principal effect has been to multiply human misery by causing a rise in human numbers at rates higher than ever before experienced.

The sixteen-member Council of the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO), the newest of the twelve specialized agencies of the UN, held its first session in London after its membership had been completed by the Assembly. A second session of the Council was held in London during July 1959, at which the work program, administrative arrangements, and the relationship of the Organization with the other UN agencies were discussed. Among the new proposals made to the Council was one that IMCO should consider the problem of simplifying the voluminous documentation required by international shipping when entering or leaving port. Another aspect of the Council's second session was a debate on technical cooperation with underdeveloped countries, but a full report on IMCO's participation in UN technical assistance programs was not to be considered until the next Council session, scheduled for March 1960.