The eighth session of the General Assembly, which had recessed on December 9, 1953, to be reconvened if necessary by the President of the Assembly with the concurrence of a majority of United Nations Members to consider the problem of Korea, was formally adjourned at a brief meeting on September 20, 1954.

From its 865th through its 868th meetings, the Security Council considered the claim of Argentina that its sovereign rights had been violated by the illicit and clandestine transfer of Adolf Eichmann from Argentine territory to the territory of the state of Israel. After the representative of Israel had been invited to participate without vote in the deliberations of the Council, Mr. Amadeo (Argentina), opened the discussion by reviewing the history of cordial relations between the two countries, noting in addition Argentina's traditional attitude of opposition to racial and religious discrimination and persecution. Argentina had brought the case to the UN, he said, only after exhausting all the possibilities of direct bilateral negotiation. While Argentina did not defend the crimes of which Eichmann had been accused, nor did it seek immunity for him, it could not allow a crime to be judged as a direct result of the violation of Argentina's rights; thus this was not the case of Adolf Eichmann and his crimes against humanity, but rather the case of a country claiming justice after an act which, if it were to be repeated, might shake the very foundations of international order. It was in this light that the Argentine delegate presented a draft resolution to the Security Council whereby the Council would, inter alia, request the government of Israel to proceed to an appropriate reparation in conformity with the Charter of the UN and the rules of international law.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. By definition it is concerned with the atmosphere and atmospheric processes and, hence, with the human environment, for whatever definition of the human environment may be adopted, the atmosphere is clearly one of its essential elements. Many atmospheric processes are intimately, indeed inextricably, related to processes and phenomena the study of which falls within the compass of other geophysical disciplines — notably hydrology and oceanography. The WMO has therefore certain responsibilities in these fields also, and as a result its interest in the human environment is somewhat wider than its title may suggest.

International technical aid programs, under the impetus of the Point Four idea, have now been functioning for three years. The time has perhaps come to review program operations in terms of some of the practical problems that have confronted the managers of the United Nations and United States programs. Such an evaluation, however tentative in character, may throw light on the potentialities and difficulties of the multilateral versus the bilateral framework for technical assistance. Exaggerated claims and counter-claims have been advanced with respect to the two processes. What does the record to date appear to reveal?

The sixteenth session of the Trusteeship Council was held at UN Headquarters from v June 8 to July 22, 1955. At the opening meeting Mason Sears (United States) was elected president and Max Dorsinville (Haiti) vice-president. An agenda of 20 items was adopted by the Council, which devoted the greater part of the session to examination of the annual reports on the administration of the trust territories of Somaliland, the Pacific Islands, Western Samoa, New Guinea and Nauru. The Council also made arrangements for visiting missions for 1955, and dealt with a number of questions referred to it by the General Assembly. Before concluding its sixteenth session, the Council adopted the report of the Secretary-General on credentials, and elected R. M. Urquía (El Salvador) temporary president for the fifth special session of the Council, which was to be held at UN Headquarters in October or November, 1955 for the purpose of considering the special report of the 1955 visiting mission to the trust territories of Togoland under British administration and Togoland under French administration.

In the industrialized northern hemisphere we are assaulted daily with evidence of the deteriorating quality of the human environment: Rivers are closed to fishing because of dangerous levels of contamination; the safety of important foods is challenged; the foul air that major urban areas have been forced to endure is now spreading like an inkblot into surrounding areas. Lack of early concern about the implications for the environment of the widespread application of modern technology has allowed the problem to grow rapidly into a critical domestic and international issue.

Since its inception twelve years ago the UN has never handled very large sums of money by comparison with national budgets. Nevertheless, the small contributions have often been given grudgingly by member states with mumblings of “waste” about the personnel and the programs. In our view such innuendoes are unfounded. But we think there is room for improvement in the presentation of the budgets of the UN and its specialized agencies, particularly by developing appropriation categories which tend to indicate and measure the performance of the Organization.

Readers of this periodical will have been struck with the quantity and the variety of international bodies existing today. Whatever else may be lacking in international organization there is no lack of international organizations.

The signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949, gave rise to a number of books and articles on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the volume of which will probably continue for some time. The treaty and the organization that it created represent the clearest challenge to Soviet expansionism since the end of World War II. Through this action twelve nations of North America and western Europe resolved to consider an armed attack against one member an attack against them all, and to create sufficient stiength within the alliance to deter potential aggressors. But NATO's continuing interest to commentators stems from reasons other than its value as a weapon against the spread of communism. To some writers NATO appears to be a stimulant that would revive a moribund United Nations, to others it is the beginning of a new kind of alliance unprecedented in history, to still others, it is a symbol of America's rejection of isolationism. So vague are some of the treaty's articles and so rapid has been the evolution of the organization that almost any observer could derive whatever meaning he wishes out of NATO's development.

It is now three years since the Southcast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was rather hastily established after the French military collapse in Indo-China. What is its present effectiveness, and what are its prospects, as a security organization for Southeast Asia? There has never been any doubt or obscurity about SEATO's over-riding purpose to resist the extension, by whatever means, of communist rule in Southeast Asia. At die Manila Conference diere was some clash of opinion on how the purpose of die proposed body should be officially proclaimed. The United States wanted to limit it to resistance against communist aggression, while the United Kingdom and some odier countries diought it would be more politic to refer to aggression in general terms, since this might make SEATO less unpalatable to the Colombo powers. The United States then agreed to refer to aggression in general terms in the body of the Treaty, but announced its "Understanding" that its own military obligations were limited to die resistance of communist aggression. At the same time Australia insisted on its own proviso diat nothing in the Treaty must be construed as an obligation to intervene in any possible conflict between Asian members of the Commonwealth. Australia diereby sought to make it clear that SEATO was in no way concerned with the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. These verbal skirmishes only made it the more evident diat in fact, if not in form, SEATO was concerned solely widi stemming the advance of communism.

International economic organizations once identified as Western have evolved in some cases to the extent that their survival depends importantly on forging symbiotic links with Third and Fourth World clients. Such national governments often derive net gains from membership in those organizations, for example, the World Bank. These gains may be as much political as economic. Thus the Government of India, influential in World Bank policy generally, has used Bank agricultural projects to overcome states' resistance to central priorities. Mobilizing domestic political resources is an important dimension of membership in the international economy. Where this occurs, it argues for a view of the governments of poor countries as active, rather than passive, and as agents of domestic social transformation.

On July 10, 1950 the Interim Committee of the General Assembly met to consider the following items: 1) the report of the Subcommittee on International Cooperation in the Political Field; 2) the report of the United Nations Commission for Eritrea; and 3) the study of procedure to delimit the boundaries of the former Italian Colonies. Before these matters could be discussed, however, the committee had to elect a new vice-chairman as Abdur Rahim Khan (Pakistan) had submitted his resignation from that position following his appointment as representative of Pakistan on the United Nations Advisory Council for Libya.

The signing of the ANZUS Pact represented a confluence of attitudes. Australia and New Zealand were disturbed at the liberal Japanese peace treaty, while the United States wanted the treaty to go through with as little opposition as possible. All three countries were afraid of the march of communism in the Far East. The ANZUS Treaty made the Japanese peace settlement palatable to the Pacific Dominions, and at the same time it improved the channels of military cooperation in the Pacific. The significance of ANZUS lay as much in what it did not say as in its formal provisions; the United Kingdom was not included in ANZUS, and its absence gave rise to an extended debate in several countries. There were objections from certain Australian and New Zealand political leaders, and in the United Kingdom the Conservatives lamented “exclusion” while the Labor government declared “… it would not have been unwelcome to us if we had been included in the proposed pact”.

The fifth South Pacific Conference was held at Utulei village, near Pago Pago, American Samoa, on July 18–27, 1962, under the chairmanship of Mr. Kowles A. Ryerson, Senior Commissioner for the United States on the South Pacific Commission. Topics discussed by the standing committees and in the preliminary sessions of the Conference mainly related to economic and social development and health. Subjects included methods of training Pacific islanders in business methods and practices ways of improving the quality and marketing of agricultural produce and of developing marketing efficiency, the changing role of women in the region, the importance of organized adult eduction schemes, and ways of obtaining a reasonable balance between social advancement and economic development in the South Pacific region. Delegates also reviewed the work of the South Pacific Commission since the last Conference was held in 1959.

Probably no other organ of the United Nations concerned with economic affairs has been so closely dependent on the current temper of east-west relations as the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE). The paralyzing effect of the cold war on ECE was such tiiat its activities, as distinct from its membership, have become truly all-European only within the last three years. To outline this development and reflect upon the present character of east-west cooperation within ECE is die concern of this article. But first a few words about die character of the organization itself, for its constitution is a poor guide.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held its eleventh General Conference in Paris from November 14 to December 15, 1960, under the presidency of Mr. Akale-Work Abte-Wold (Ethiopia). Ninety-eight member states of UNESCO participated in the Conference compared with the 75 that were members in 1958 at the time of the tenth General Conference. The General Conference approved the program of activities for 1961–1962 and unanimously voted a budget of $32,513,228 to finance it; to this amount was added over $12 million provided by the United Nations Technical Assistance Fund to enable UNESCO to carry out many additional educational and scientific projects. UNESCO was also to act as executing agency for seventeen projects concerning higher technical education, for which the UN Special Fund was to provide more than $11 million in 1961–1962. Also allocated by the Conference was $915,000 for the construction of an additional building in Paris, the total cost of which was to be $3,535,000.

The notion of the “world as a whole” is becoming increasingly prominent in the thinking and pronouncements of international prog-nosticators. Yet “globalism”, its functional expression, is a relatively new approach in the United Nations. In fact, it has hardly arrived. This statement is not paradoxical or even surprising. Globalism is not the same thing as internationalism as we have known it up to the present. There is more involved here than a matter of semantics. Traditional internationalism is derived from the dictates of political wisdom and a sense of human solidarity in a world of growing interdependence but of unlimited horizons opened up by tech nology. Globalism is associated today with the ambivalence of technology, its negative effects on the degradation of the environment, the destruction of ecological balances, the limited capacity of the biosphere, the possible depletion of natural resources, the population explosion, the finiteness of the planet, and perhaps even the finiteness of knowledge.

The Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) held its 25th session in Geneva, January 19—February 1, 1960, under the chairmanship of Professor E. Aujaleu. At the onset, the Board unanimously recommended that the World Health Assembly adopt a working budget of $18,569,620 for 1961, representing a 10 percent increase over the preceding year, due to the growth of the Organization's activities. The Board also considered a report, based on the recommendations of its Advisory Committee on Medical Research, on the general development of the medical research program; it dealt with such subjects as malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, and insecticide resistance, among others. It recommended that priority be given to the following: 1) services to research, such as the standardization of nomenclature and techniques and equipment to ensure comparable results in different parts of the world; 2) setting up reference centers; and 3) improving the training of research workers and communications among them. Noting these priorities, the Board expressed its satisfaction with the proposed research program for 1960–1961. The Board also considered a UN resolution on the encouragement of international cancer research through awarding prizes for outstanding work in this field; however, on the basis of a study made in connection with the intensification of its medical research program, the Board expressed doubt whether awarding prizes was the most suitable means of encouraging research.

The 41st (Maritime) session of the International Labor Conference was held in Geneva from April 29 to May 14, 1958, under the presidency of Mr. I. Kawasaki (Japanese government delegate). It was attended by 370 delegates, advisers, and observers, representing the governments, shipowners, and seafarers of 46 member countries. The Conference took note of reports from its credentials committee, declaring that the objections lodged against the nomination of the Chinese delegation and the Indian workers' delegation were irreceivable.