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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

When the Charter of the United Nations was being written and put into effect, the feature that was most emphasized by its supporters was the provision for the use of collective forces to keep the peace. It was the failure of this particular feature of the Charter system to become effective which was mainly responsible for the subsequent decline of confidence in the UN as a peace organization. For a time, hopes were rekindled by the role of the United Nations in meeting aggression in Korea. Recent events in the Middle East, particularly the establishment of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), have revived interest in the possibility of strengthening the UN as an organization to maintain international peace and security.Because of the hopes aroused as well as the results achieved, it is important to analyze objectively what UNEF is, what its role has been, and to what it may lead.

A new generation of advanced conventional arms developed during the late 1960s and 1970s, ranging from antitank guided missiles to scatterable land mines, promises to buttress the defensive capabilities of their possessors. Selective transfer of such new weapons in certain cases may be a useful nonproliferation tactic. However, the fungibility of selective arms transfers with other security related nonproliferation measures, and particularly with security guarantees, appears limited. Moreover, not only would that tactic have little impact on other compelling proliferation incentives, but it would incur important risks. Nonetheless, those risks may be less than the risks and costs of nuclear proliferation in conflict-prone regions. And they may be minimized by suitable policies. The dilemma of having to choose between so using arms transfers for nonproliferation purposes and continued pursuit of global conventional arms sales restraint has been overdrawn. In contrast with recent efforts to restrain the spread of nuclear weapons, efforts to foster multilateral conventional arms restraint have proved unavailing. Various factors explain that pattern of success and failure, not least of all the different international norms in the respective areas.

Resuming its 22nd session at United Nations Headquarters on April 24, 1968, the General Assembly held its 1643rd–1672nd plenary meetings drought June 12, 1968. The session was formally closed at the 1673rd plenary meeting, held on September 23, 1968. The Assembly agreed without objection to a procedure outlined by its President, Cornelia Manes cu (Rumania), under which the First (Political and Security) Committee would discuss the report submitted by the Conference of the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament (ENDC) concerning its negotiations on a nonproliferation treaty while the plenary considered the question of South West Africa. Also on the agenda was the situation in the Middle East.

The proof for “War Is in the Error Term,” a piece that appeared in the Summer 1999 issue of International Organization, contains a subtle error. Once the correction is made, there are broader implications for testing theories of war using quantitative studies. Large-n tests to verify the incomplete information explanation for war will be more difficult to perform than originally anticipated.

The nineteenth (1964–1965) session of the General Assembly was virtually deadlocked over the financial crisis, a crisis which arose as a result of disagreement between the Members about how the United Nations peacekeeping operations were to be financed. Three years earlier, in 1961, the General Assembly, having been informed of the substantial arrears in the payment of assessments, mainly for the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) and the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC), adopted on December 20, a resolution asking the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion as to whether the expenditures authorized for the UNEF and ONUC operations constituted “expenses of the Organization” within the meaning of Article 17, paragraph 2, of the United Nations Charter. On December 19, 1962, the Assembly voted to accept the advisory opinion of the Court to the effect that the expenditures of these operations constituted “expenses of the Organization” within the meaning of Article 17 (2) of the Charter. However, attempts to extract the arrears from the defaulting states, the largest of which were the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union) and France, on the strength of the Court's advisory opinion, largely failed; and the matter came to a head at the nineteenth session of the General Assembly when some Members, notably the United States, proposed that sanctions under Article 19 of the Charter be taken against the defaulting states. The crisis was finally averted toward the end of the nineteenth session when the United States decided not to pursue the question of sanctions.

With the great spread and intensification of marine fisheries exploitation, the traditional fisheries regime of free and open access (part of traditional “freedom of the seas”) has been modified by many regional or stock-related management arrangements, and is now undergoing drastic change through a radical extension of coastal state jurisdictions. This article deals mostly with the development of various regional and stock-related arrangements. After sketching the overall purposes of management, the aiticle details some of the differences among competing states which have delayed or limited management arrangements, or otherwise complicated their development. Issues of allocation may be uppermost for competing interests, discussed here in the context of shifts from undivided to divided catch limits. The regulatory powers of intergovernmental fisheries commissions have generally been quite limited. While fisheries scientists have in some cases performed vital roles in encouraging regional arrangements, their information and advice has been of limited scope and influence in securing more restrictive regulatory regimes. FAO's Committee on Fisheries (COFI) might be called a global fisheries commission, though much of its most important work has related to amimating and supporting arrangements of a regional character. The radical shift outward of national jurisdictions is rearranging fisheries exploitation in most parts of the world. Given the nature of the resource, however, some forms of regional or stock arrangements will still be needed if the overall purposes of management are to be realized.

This note is intended primarily for graduate students and other researchers without previous field experience in studying international organizations. I do not propose either to summarize or to repeat the many expositions on survey research, interviewing, and the like; radier the focus here will be primarily on a number of the “nuts and bolts” problems not usually treated in the literature that the researcher is likely to face. If the individual is aware of these beforehand he can save himself time and a few mistakes.

At the beginning of the seventeenth session of the General Assembly, there were thirteen Commonwealth countries at the United Nations, constituting one-eighth of the total membership. Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago (which both became independent during August 1962) and Uganda (which received its independence in October) became Members of the UN during the seventeenth session. Kenya and British Guiana are two other Commonwealth countries approaching independence. If there are no other new United Nations Members in the meantime, and if these five remain in the Commonwealth, as they are expected to do, their addition would mean that one-sixth of the Members of the UN were also Commonwealth members.

When the Soviet Union withdrew recently from the World Health Organization, a somewhat startled world learned that even the prevention of disease can be affected by world politics. The most cursory study of international organizations for other purposes discloses that none is immune to world social and political forces. On the contrary, they are in varying degree shaped and influenced by these forces, and in fact serve as vehicles for their expression.

The fourteenth Congress of the Universal Postal Union was held from August 14 to October 3, 1957, in Ottawa, Canada, under the chairmanship of Mr. W. J. Turnbull (Canada). Work on over 1200 proposals which were submitted to the Congress was distributed among nine committees.

The United Nations is now playing a key role in the economic and technical development of the African continent and will undoubtedly be called upon to assume an even greater responsibility in this field during the next ten years. This development was correctly forecast five years ago by the late Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. For he saw that the transition from the colonial era, which had made the European countries directly responsible for the development of the vast majority of the territories and peoples in Africa, prior to independence, would thrust upon the United Nations a very specific burden. As it happened, the question of the Congo has overshadowedthe other aspects of UN activity in Africa, although one can note a remarkable continuity in the progressive implementation of a coordinated program where all agencies of the United Nations family have to play their part.

It is clear that advances in science and technology, particularly technology, have wrought major changes in society. The effects of these advances have been felt directly through the development of major new artifacts such as the automobile, the telephone, and nuclear weapons. Major social effects, often of greater importance, have also resulted from the second-order consequences of this new technology: urbanization, mass culture, pollution, industrialization, etc.

The Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) held its 21st session in Geneva, January 14–28, 1958, under the chairmanship of Sir John Charles. After discussing in detail the Director-General's proposed program of activities and budget estimates for 1959, the Board endorsed the Director-General's effective working budget of$14, 287, 600. It was suggested that in preparing the 1960 budget a greater percentage of the total expenditure should be set aside for strengthening the technical services at headquarters. In pursuance of WHO's policy of complete malaria eradication, the Director-General had drawn up a detailed program covering the operations for the following five years. Noting that the total resources available in the malaria eradication special account amounted to $5,112,000, and that the estimated expenditure for 1958 alone was $5,058,000, the Board expressed the hope that governments able to do so would make voluntary contributions to the account and requested the Director-General to take the necessary steps, including adequate publicity, to obtain additional funds, whether from governmental or from private sources.