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.

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development reported a net income of $9,856,856 for the nine months ended March 31, 1950. The net income for the first three quarters of the preceeding year had amounted to $7,383,006. Gross income, exclusive of $4,157,591 in the special reserve, amounted to $18,798,663; expenses totalled $8,941,807, including $3,248,017 administrative expenses and $5,693,700 bond interest and other payments. As of March 31,1950 the Bank had an accumulated excess of income over expenses of $23,497,950, and the special reserve amounted to $12,231,732.

Corfu Channel Case: On November 17, 1949 a public hearing was held on the Corfu Channel Case on the assessment of compensation due by Albania to the United Kingdom. After oral pleadings, the acting president (Guerrero) declared that the Court had decided to appoint two experts to decide whether the figures presented by the United Kingdom were correct. The experts designated were Rear Admiral Berck and M. de Rooy, both of the Netherlands.

In August the International Bank reported a net income for the fiscal year ending June 30,1950 of $13,698,398. For the preceding fiscal year net income had amounted to $10,610,247. Gross income, exclusive of $5,663,064 set aside in the Bank's special reserve, amounted to $25,464,065 for the year ending June 30, 1950, as compared with $21,578,413 for the preceding fiscal year. Expenses amounted to $11,765,667, including $4,370,011 for administration purposes and $7,395,656 for bond interest and other expenses. The Bank also reported that during the period from the beginning of its operations up to June 30, 1950, income had exceeded expenses by $27,339,492 and that commissions received by it on its loans and which were set aside in a special reserve, amounted to $13,737,205 on June 30,1950. During the fiscal year total loan commitments by the Bank increased from $650,100,000 to $816,445,000, loan repayments in the amount of $552,136 were received, and cancellations amounting to $7,638,017 were effected at the request of borrowers. Also disbursements on loans amounted to $87,871,146 bringing total loan disbursements on June 30, 1950 to $614,162,160 and leaving $125,799,823 to be disbursed. As of June 30,1950 the total subscribed capital was $8,348,500,000 including $125,000,000 worth of Poland's shares, which were to be repurchased by the Bank.

Council

Ninth Session: The ICAO Council met in its ninth session in Montreal from January 27 to April 6, 1950 a session devoted primarily to a re-examination of the provisional agenda of the fourth session of the Assembly. The Council decided that the period covered by its annual report to the Assembly should coincide with the calendar year, leaving the period from the first of the year to the opening of the Assembly as the subject of a supplementary report. In considering the work of the fifth session of the Legal Committee, the Council agreed that the draft Convention on Damage Caused by Aircraft to Third Parties on the Surface, a convention which had been prepared by the committee, should be presented to the fourth Assembly which could then consider the desirability of adopting and opening it for signature. Accordingly, the Legal Committee's covering report was distributed to the Contracting States. The Council also decided to recommend to the Assembly that no further consideration be given the question of joint ownership and operation of international services on trunk routes until such times as some group of states, envisaging joint ownership or operation, put forward specific proposals for that purpose.

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.

Eleventh Session: The Council met for a week (June 22–29) after the Assembly to take care of certain items requiring action before the summer recess. All of the twenty states elected to Council membership on June 10 were represented at the meeting.

The fifth annual Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization met at Washington from November 21 to December 6, 1949. Five additional countries were admitted to FAO bringing the total membership to 63: Afghanistan, Indonesia, Israel, Korea and Sweden. No action was taken on the application of Spain. It was decided that the permanent headquarters of the organization should be established in Rome, after a final ballot in which 30 votes were cast for Rome and 28 for the United States. The Conference directed the FAO Council to appoint a headquarters advisory committee to which were named the representatives of China, France, India, Mexico, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Pakistan, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Burma, and Belgium were elected to the Council replacing China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands and the Philippines. The United Kingdom was re-elected.

A net profit of $3,162,980 was reported by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the quarter ending September 30, 1949. This compared with a net profit of $2,317,723 for the first quarter of the preceding fiscal year. The net profit brought the total net excess of income over expenses since the Bank began operations to $16,804,074, exclusive of $9,409,734 accumulated in the Special Reserve Fund. Disbursements on loans during the quarter amounted to $15,149,903, making a total of loan disbursements to September 30, 1949 of $541,440,917 and there remained $136,159,083 to be disbursed on loans then in effect. During this time Denmark became the fourth country to make available for lending purposes a part of its 18 per cent currency subscription.

Governing Body

Before concluding its 111th session in Geneva, the ILO Governing Body took the following actions: 1) established a committee to advise the Governing Body on “Asian problems and on the Asian aspects of general problems;” 2) accepted the application of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions for consultative relationships with ILO; 3) decided to hold early in 1951 a Near and Middle East Regional Conference; and 4) deferred until its autumn session consideration of the proposal that ILO create a commission to conduct an impartial inquiry into the nature and extent of forced labor throughout the world.

The Governing Body of the International Labor Organization held its 112th session at Geneva from June 2 to 30, 1950. During consideration of an agenda of 22 items, the Governing Body completed the membership of the fact-finding and conciliation commission on freedom of association, decided to establish an ad hoc committee of five or six persons having experience in the field of occupational safetyand health to be appointed by the Director-General in consultation with officers of the Governing Body, and authorized the Director-General (Morse) to communicate the report of the Third International Pneumoconiosis Conference held at Sydney in February and March 1950 to the United Nations Secretary-General and the Director-General of the World Health Organization. The Governing Body also convened a meeting of experts to study the status and conditions of employment of domestic workers, authorized the Director-General to communicate to governments the reports, resolutions and memoranda adopted by the second session of the Chemical Industries Committee, accepted an invitation from the government of the United States of Indonesia to hold the first session of the Committee on Work in Plantations in Indonesia in December 1950, and appointed members of the Governing Body delegates to the third session of the Petroleum Committee to be held in Geneva in October and November. Other action taken by the Governing Body included acceptance of the invitation of the French government to hold the third session of the Textiles Committee in Lyons from November 28 to December 9, 1950, approved the general lines of a program of technical assistance ILO could undertake in the manpower field, noted that ILO had $2,500,000 at its disposal for its technical assistance activities, and accepted an offer by states members of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation which were also members of ILO to make available to ILO $998,000 for establishment of a special fund to finance additional action in the field of migration.

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;

A new exchange office was established in March by the International Monetary Fund to keep track of all new exchange restrictions imposed by member countries and to record changes in currency regulations. The office had no policing powers but was to remain in constant touch with officials in all member countries and to maintain files for consultation by bankers, foreign traders and others interested in foreign currency regulations.

The government of Egypt paid $8,507,929.67 in gold and United States dollars to the International Monetary Fund on July 10,1950 in exchange for the equivalent amount in Egyptian pounds. Of the amount paid by Egypt to the Fund $829,766.03 was in gold and $7,678,163.64 in United States dollars. This payment, which became due in consequence of recent increases in Egypt's monetary reserves, fulfilled that country's obligation to use part of the increase to repurchase the Fund's holdings of Egyptian pounds in excess of 75 percent of Egypt's quota.

The Council, meeting on September 6, 1949 for its eighth session, elected members and chairmen of committees, and approved the Council work program for the session. ICAO's program of meetings for 1950 was discussed briefly and referred to the Air Navigation Commission, the Air Transport Committee and the Joint Support Committee for consideration and report. The Council noted that no part of Annex 9 of the Chicago Convention (Facilitation of Air Transport) had been disapproved by a majority of contracting states and therefore declared Annex 9 to be in force. Annexes 6 and 7 (Operation of Aircraft Scheduled International Air Services and Aircraft Nationality and Registration Marks) were also accepted.

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 110th meeting of the Governing Body of the International Labor Organization was scheduled to meet at Mysore, India from January 3 to 7, 1950. Among the twenty-six agenda items was a recommendation of the General Conference of ILO that the Governing Body consider instructing Director General David A. Morse to prepare a report on the problem of unemployment. The Governing Body was requested to consider at the same time the desirability of placing the question on the agenda of the International Labor Conference. Other matters calling for action by the Governing Body were proposals: 1) for the establishment of a special ILO committee on Asian affairs to ensure full development of ILO Asian activities; 2) for a program of ILO fellowships; and 3) that ILO create a fact-finding and conciliation commission on freedom of association which would provide impartial investigation of questions of infringement of trade union rights, as suggested by the Economic and Social Council.

The fifth session of the IRO Council which met in Geneva during March 1950 decided upon the maintenance and care of displaced persons who were to be resettled before March 31, 1951. The termination date of IRO activities was to be carried on beyond the former termination date of June 30, 1950 set by the Council. The Director-General, J. Donald Kingsley, was instructed to request the Allied High Commission in Germany to contribute to the cost of the additional program out of Deutschemark funds. The Council voted that the International Tracing Service, an activity of IRO, also was to be continued beyond June 30, 1950, but that the Director-General was to arrange a transfer of this service to the High Commission in Germany before March 31, 1951. The sixth session of the General Council was to meet in Geneva in October.

Second Annual Report

In accordance with the agreement with the Economic and Social Council, the International Refugee Organization transmitted to the Council on May 2, 1950 a report of its activities covering the period January 1, 1949 to December 31, 1949 and containing the program of the organization for the remaining period of its operation, January 1, 1950 to March 31, 1951. It was reported that, including both those repatriated to the country of their origin and those resettled in other countries, 351,742 refugees and displaced persons had been reestablished during 1949; an increase over the previous year. Starting January 1, 1950, IRO was to assist 590,062 refugees, of whom 16,150 were known to require continuing institutional care (the “hard core” cases), 181,000 considered resettleable, and some 60,000 others desiring resettlement but having little chance of meeting the qualifications. In planning its future activities, IRO had to take into account the limited time and resources remaining and as the date of termination approached, the task became increasingly more difficult as the proportion of “resettleable” cases decreased. IRO reported that it could no longer look to repatriation as a solution to any substantial proportion of its remaining cases.