Listed below is the membership of UN bodies for 1960. Unless otherwise noted, membership expires on December 31 of the year indicated.

The ninth meeting of the International Whaling Commission was held in London in June 1957. Commissioners from all the members were present, with the exception of Panama and Canada. The latter, however, was represented by an observer, while observers were also present from Argentina, Italy, and Portugal, and from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea.

The South West Africa Cases presented the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with a choice not only between the parties to the suit but also between rival claims about the nature of international law itself. Perhaps every case presents the Court with a choice of some degree between jurisprudential foundations, but in the South West Africa Cases the choice is striking.

The Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) held a number of meetings during the period May-December 1956. Following a series of discussions concerning the proposed text of the statutes of the Inter-American Peace Committee as submitted by the Committee on Juridical-Political Matters the Council revised and approved the text on May 9.1 A document dealing with the draft convention on extradition was also submitted by the committee to the Council, which decided to transmit the draft to OAS member states for comment. From July 18 to 22 the Council held a special meeting in Panama City to commemorate the Congress of Panama of 1826.

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.

The Trusteeship Council held its eighth special session from October 13 to October 17, 1958, at UN Headquarters in New York. Following the adoption of its agenda, the Council decided to examine simultaneously the two major items before it, the future of Togoland under French administration and the examination of the annual report of the French government on Togoland for the year 1956. The Council also had before it the observations of the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on the territory. At the Council's 937th meeting, Mr. Dorsinville, the commissioner for the supervision of elections in the territory, presented his report on the elections which had been held on April 28, 1958, which he had drawn up in accordance with a resolution adopted at the twelfth session of the General Assembly. Mr. Dorsinville drew the attention of the Council to the fact that the election results had been contested in six electoral circonscriptions, but that the appeals concerning the results had been rejected by the administrative tribunal. The composition of the Chamber of Deputies was, therefore, the same as that announced by the Election Returns Board, as given in Mr. Dorsinville's report. The commissioner re-affirmed the conviction expressed in his report that the results of the elections reflected the wishes of the people of Togoland. He pointed out that by the election of April 1958 the unanimity of the government of Togoland had ended, so that the present government was composed of a majority of a little more than two-thirds of the members of the new Assembly. The change in public opinion in Togoland seemed to explain the election results, in Mr. Dorsinville's view; the UN mission, he stated, had helped to create the circumstances favorable to the free expression of the people's will. Mr. Dorsinville also noted that the conversations between the French government and a Togolese delegation which had resulted in a communique were an indication of the good relations to be promoted between Togoland and France.

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.

It is a truism that the text of the Charter gives a quite misleading picture of the United Nations as it is today. In no respect is this more true than in the working of the Organization in the maintenance of international peace and security. Those provisions of the Charter which were claimed by its authors to provide the new Organization with teeth that the League of Nations did not have either have never been used or have in practice been of little importance. New emphases and new methods have been developed through the liberal interpretation of Charter provisions. These have not always been equally acceptable to all Members, however. The process of adaptation and development continues, with great present uncertainty as to what the future has in store.

The Ministerial Council of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) met in Lisbon on May 9–11, 1963, under the chairmanship of Mr. Corrêa d'Oliveira (Portuguese Minister of State). The Ministers decided to establish a final timetable for the dismantling of tariffs on industrial products. These tariffs would be eliminated by December 31, 1966. The next 10 percent reduction would take place on December 31, 1963, thus bringing intra-EFTA tariffs down to 40 percent of their level when EFTA began.

A visitor from another, more advanced, planet would find many extraordinary paradoxes on earth, but surely the most extraordinary would be the fantastic destructive potential of nuclear weapons which contrasts starkly with the primitive and near-impotent institutions of global peacekeeping. He might marvel that a breed capable of producing the wealth for a $185 billion armory of lethal devices, let alone the technology for killing several hundred million humans in a single exchange of nuclear weapons, had not also produced a workable international order capable of regulating such apocalyptic man-made power.

In June 1948 the International Monetary Fund reported that its activities during the preceding nine months had been focused on offering temporary financial assistance to its members for monetary stabilization operations and on consultation on exchange problems. The Fund had prepared several special studies for member nations and had sent missions of technical advice and expert assistance to a number of countries.

The January 14, 1960, meeting of the Council of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was preceded by a meeting of representatives of the organization's eighteen members and of the United States and Canada to examine the resolutions adopted by a special economic conference. At this meeting, which ended with approval of a move sponsored by the United States that was designed to reorganize economic cooperation and transform the organization, it was decided, and subsequently approved by the OEEC Council and the United States and Canada, that: 1) four experts, representing respectively North America, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the European Economic Community (EEC) and other European nations, would prepare a report on the transformation of OEEC for consideration by senior officials of twenty countries, namely, the OEEC nations and the United States and Canada, at a meeting scheduled for April 19, 1960; 2) a preparatory meeting of representatives of the same twenty nations would be held in a month's time, when decisions would be taken to appoint a permanent chairman, a secretariat, and working parties to look into outstanding trade problems; and 3) a group, consisting of Canada, France, West Germany, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, the United States, the United Kingdom, and a representative of EEC, would be informally set up to coordinate aid policies to underdeveloped countries. The outcome of the discussions was regarded as paving the way for a new Atlantic economic grouping, composed of the members of OEEC plus the United States and Canada, which would give priority to consideration of the problems between the two rival European economic groups, EEC and EFTA. Other matters discussed by the Council were the removal of discriminatory measures against imports from the dollar zone and the increase in assistance to underdeveloped countries.

See Food and Agriculture Organization, p. 122.

The convention of the newest European economic organization, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), was initialed in Stockholm, Sweden, on November 20, 1959, by cabinet ministers of Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Under terms of the Stockholm agreement, according to the press, the seven nations were to eliminate trade barriers toward each other on a gradual basis designed to bring full free trade by 1970. Import tariffs in force on January 1, 1960, were due to be reduced 20 percent as of July 1, with subsequent tariff cuts at the rate of 10 percent a year. In addition to gradual mutual freedom of trade, the seven nations agreed to economic integration and harmonization of wages, social benefits, and other production cost factors. However, unlike the six members of the European Economic Community (EEC), the seven planned to retain their national tariff systems toward the exports of non-members.

The seventeenth session of the contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was held in Geneva from October 31 to November 19, 1960, under the chairmanship of Mr. Edmundo Penna Barbosa da Silva (Brazil). One of the main items of discussion was regional economic integration, considered in terms of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the proposed Latin American free trade area, and the European Economic Community (EEC). Examination of the Stockholm Convention establishing EFTA, begun at the sixteenth session, was resumed, with the contracting parties concluding that the provisions concerning the setting up, within the time limit set forth in the convention, of a free trade area were within the definition of such an area, as contained in Article XXIV of GATT. Delegates felt, however, that there remained some legal and practical issues which could be more fruitfully discussed in the light of experience of the operation of the convention, and thus welcomed the willingness of EFTA members to furnish additional information as the organization evolved. In examining the Montevideo Treaty proposing a Latin American free trade area, delegates reached much the same conclusions. In response to the report on developments within EEC, particularly with regard to tariffs, delegates expressed a desire to receive details on the common agricultural policy of the Community, and raised queries as to the harmful effect of the Community's progressively favorable treatment of the associated territories on the trade of certain outside countries with EEC.