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Decisionmaking in the Economic and Social Council

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Walter R. Sharp
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Extract

The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is not a diplomatic conference, or a parliament, or an executive organ, although it smacks of all three. Among international, governmental, deliberative bodies it is sui generis. As such, it engages in discussing quasi diplomatic issues, chiefly economic and social in nature, in recommending policy actions by governments, in trying to plan and coordinate interagency programs in the economic and social domain, and in innovating and supervising programs under UN sponsorship.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1968 , pp. 881 - 901
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1968

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References

1 See General Assembly Resolution 1991 B (XVIII), December 17, 1963.

2 See Rule 10 of the Council's Rules of Procedure (Document E/3063/Rev.1).

3 These figures include routine as well as substantive items. Some items are currently grouped as subitems under a broader rubric, e.g., “development and coordination of the activities of the organizations within the UN system.”

4 See ECOSOC Resolution 1156 (XLI), Part I, August 5, 1966.

5 The two cases were Sir Ramaswami Mudalier of India (1946–1947) and Herman Santa Cruz of Chile (1950–1951).

6 See ECOSOC Resolution 1103 (XLI), December 20, 1966, amending the Council's Rules of Procedure.

7 Economic and Social Council Official Records (40th session), 1402nd plenary meeting, p. 1Google Scholar.

8 As a matter of fact this happened in 1967, the objection being to the nominee of the Asian group for the Presidency. After intergroup consultations agreement was reached that the East European group should nominate for this office.

9 As in the General Assembly, the tradition in the Council is not to choose its President from among representatives of states which are permanent members of the Security Council.

10 According to one account (related to the author by a veteran official of the UN Secretariat) the President of the Council for 1967, amazed by the intricacies of the procedural rules and arrangements, put himself in the Secretariat's hands. As it happened, at the 43rd session the Council's secretary was also new at his job. On one occasion the secretary was reported to have “thrown the ball” back into the President's hands, saying, in effect, “That's your decision—a political onel”

11 The story (on reliable authority) goes that the members of the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) invited the Chairman of the Coordination Committee to lunch during a recent session of the Council, with a view to politely advising him on how to run his Committee. Among other things he was urged to begin meetings on time and “to take firm stands.” He was not a forceful Chairman according to this informant. During the cold-war period a “tough” President of the Council, in commenting on the Soviet delegate's characterization of an intervention by the United Kingdom, declared that “slanders and lies” should not be permitted in the Council. Whereupon the Soviet delegate retorted that as the representative of a sovereign power he did not need the President's authorization to speak as he wished. No one could refer to the delegate's remarks in such terms since they were “the truth”. This clash, which took place during a debate on forced labor, resulted in a standoff. See Economic and Social Council Official Records (9th session), 324th plenary meeting, p. 585Google Scholar.

12 African delegates often refer to their colleagues, while speaking from the floor, as “friends” or “brothers”.

13 This happened at least three times in the Coordination Committee at the 1967 summer session. When the Chairman asked for speakers on item 17 (a broad item with subitems from a through j), there was a long, dead silence. On inquiring whedier any delegate had comments to make on the specialized agency reports (one of the subitems) the Chairman received no response. Any speakers for the afternoon meeting?—the frustrated Chairman then asked. Still silence. Whereupon the Chairman announced the cancellation of the meeting. At this embarrassing juncture the United States delegate offered to fill in the breach by making some preliminary observations during the afternoon. The morning meeting, having begun as late as 11 o'clock, adjourned at 11:30. Four days later a similar situation occurred. A week after that an afternoon meeting had to be cancelled because of “no speakers”, while the Committee waited for the processing of a draft resolution for consideration the following day.

14 Nowadays votes are sometimes avoided on fairly routine matters.

15 For an informative account of how this works in terms of intra- and inter-delegation behavior as of the late 1950's see Hadwen, John G. and Kaufmann, Johan, How United Nations Decisions Are Made (Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1960)Google Scholar. These two authors served for many years on their countries' delegations, Canada and the Netherlands, respectively.

16 UN Document E/AC.6/L.362/Rev.1, adopted as ECOSOC Resolution 1257 (XLIII), August 2, 1967.

17 UN Document E/AC.24/L.312/Rev.2, adopted as ECOSOC Resolution 1279 (XLIII), August 4, 1967.

18 The United States, the United Kingdom, and France, along with the “white” Commonwealth countries, sit with the Western European group. Malta recendy shifted from the Western European to the Asian group. Trinidad and Tobago has joined the Latin American group.

19 This is according to a knowledgeable staff participant in Council sessions over recent years.

20 Economic and Social Council Official Records (41st session), 1445th plenary meeting, 08 5, 1966, p. 198Google Scholar.

21 ECOSOC Resolution 1068 (XXXIX), July 16, 1965.

22 Quoted from ECOSOC Resolution 1029 (XXXVII), August 13, 1964.

23 As far back as 1963 the Council took cognizance of this “multiplicity,” noting that it was causing confusion, particularly in the developing countries. The Secretary-General was requested to study the feasibility of preparing an annotated index or compendium of resolutions in the economic, social, and human rights fields adopted by ECOSOC and the Assembly. (ECOSOC Resolution 988 [XXXVI], August 2, 1963.) Four years later this idea was again advanced in slightly different form.

24 This proposal was the subject of successive ad hoc working group resolutions at the 31st, 33rd, and 35th sessions of the Council and subsequently was deferred to the 43rd and then to the 45th sessions.

25 See ECOSOC Resolution 1274 (XLIII), August 4, 1967; see also UN Document E/4428, containing the report of the Coordination Committee relative to the history of this resolution.

26 See the summary record of the 329th meeting of the Coordination Committee, July 28, 1967 (UN Document E/AC.24/SR.329).

27 Rule 61 of the Rules of Procedure.

28 Reportedly, one senior staff official did play a significant part in the decision to increase the size of ECOSOC commissions and committees pending the enlargement of the Council itself.

29 An interesting instance of this came to the writer's attention during a meeting of the Coordination Committee at the Council's 43rd session. At that time the Soviet delegate gave vent to sharp criticism of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for allegedly refusing a loan to the United Arab Republic for political reasons just prior to the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967. The representative of the IMF hastened to set the Soviet representative right by explaining to him that his facts, gleaned from the press, were wrong. At a later meeting the Fund's representative inserted into the official record a smoothly diplomatic statement clarifying Fund policy.

30 The Undersecretary for Economic and Social Affairs tries to do this as far as the constitutional structure permits, but his position is far weaker than that of the director-general of a major specialized agency.

31 This was done at ECOSOC's 34th session, summer 1962.

32 See, on this point, Kotschnig's, Walter insightful article in International Organization, Winter 1968 (Vol. 22, No. 1), pp. 16–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 See The United Nations Development Decade: Proposals for Action (UN Publication Sales No:62.11.B.2) (United Nations, 1962)Google Scholar.

34 In passing, it may be of interest to note that ECOSOC has on several occasions appointed individual rapporteurs from its own current or previous membership to prepare reports on specific problems. See in this connection the report on “Freedom of Information” prepared by Salvador P. Lopez of the Philippines (UN Document E/2426); and the report on the slavery question by Hans Engin of Norway (UN Document E/2673, and Add.1–4, submitted to the 847th meeting of the Council, April 7, 1955). A more recent example is the report by Raymond Scheyven of Belgium on the issue of a Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development (SUNFED). Certain of the functional and regional commissions have also used the rapporteur device a number of times.

35 In 1967 the Council (see ECOSOC Resolution 1267 B [XLIII] of August 3, 1967) gave recognition to the growing number and importance of such non-UN organizations by inviting the Secretary General to propose names of organizations that should be represented by observers at Council sessions.