For nearly a quarter of a century, European television audiences have enjoyed international coverage of news, sports, and entertainment programs from abroad because of EUROVISION, one of the most successful efforts at technical and cultural cooperation on that continent. The EUROVISION network is an activity of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) currently linking some twenty-five national TV broadcasting services in Western Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East through a permanent network of microwave relays supplemented by satellite hookups to the more remote members. Participation is on a voluntary basis, which means that the international network is more or less a noncommercial clearing house for bi- and multi-lateral program exchanges plus joint telecasts of Olympic games or overseas events. Although EUROVISION programming accounts for only a small share of the total TV broadcast hours in Europe and is hampered by cultural and linguistic barriers, it has proven effective.

Within the past eighteen months three disputes involving American republics in the Caribbean area have been brought officially before the Organization of American States. In each instance the Organization, through its Council, as mediator and conciliator, has taken action crowned with at least temporary success. This concentrated testing of a new international institution (new in the sense of recent reconstitution by charter) suggests the need to examine the cases for light thrown on the following questions: What are some of the fundamental causes of Caribbean friction and to what extent can the Organization alleviate them; what is the specific nature of the cases with which the Council has had to deal; what instruments and techniques have been employed in their settlement; and, finally, what tentative conclusions seem warranted as to the efficacy of the inter-American system in the field of pacific settlement?

Current discussion about the Atlantic Pact has given a new emphasis and importance to an old controversy. Ever since the creation of the League of Nations men have disputed bitterly about the relationship of lesser groupings of states to an over-all organization. The view of President Wilson and many of his supporters was that the two were directly opposed to each other. It was argued that such limited security organizations were, in effect, alliances, that they would produce counter-alliances, a revival of the “balance of power,” and the destruction of an organization dedicated to the principle of world-wide “collective” security.

At its founding one of the UN's most publicized advantages over its predecessor, the League of Nations, was the fact that it was a peace organization “with teeth.” This somewhat unattractive phrase referred to Chapter VII of the Charter and the possibility of military force being put at the disposal of the Security Council. In fact this provision of the Charter was one of the first victims of East-West disagreement, and, although the Military Staff Committee met regularly for many years and in the early years held voluminous discussions, the actual military arrangements foreseen in Chapter VII never became a reality. The assumption of the continuing unanimity of the great powers, which particularly affected this part of the Charter, proved to be illusory almost at once, while the idea that the Organization could not and should not take collective action against one of the great powers has continued, with the partial exception of Korea, to be respected. Thus it has become increasingly clear that the United Nations can neither deal with an aggression arising from a great-power conflict nor use the military resources of the great powers directly in dealing with other breaches of the peace, since such a use might all too easily project the great-power struggle onto the situation being dealt with. The development of new forms of peace-keeping machinery have in part been the response of the Organization to this dilemma.

The development, in size as well as importance, of the international civil service is a relatively recent phenomenon in the international scene. One of its consequences is an increase in die number of problems that may and do arise between an international organization and the members of its staff. Such problems exist in all civil services, national as well as international; they arise in relation to the legal position of the service officials, to their dismissals and promotions (or lack of them), to disciplinary measures against any of them, to their salaries, leaves of absence and other such administrative “details”. On all such questions, the views on which the organization, as represented by its higher administrative officers, bases its actions, may differ from the views of the officials concerned. The facts in each case may be in dispute, or the meaning of the terms and provisions of the contracts of employment and the regulations of the service, may be understood in different ways by die parties concerned.

Though the United Nations has succeeded to only a limited extent in bringing about the actual settlement or adjustment of disputes and threatening situations that have been brought to its attention, it has achieved a considerable measure of success in its efforts to bring fighting to an end and to assist the parties in maintaining the cessation of hostilities to which they have agreed. In Indonesia, the United Nations was able to follow up its success in inducing the parties to agree to a cease-fire with a valuable assist in the negotiation of a final political settlement. In Palestine, however, the United Nations contribution has been largely limited to getting the states directly involved in the fighting to agree to a cease-fire, and then to armistice agreements. The political issues involved seem as far from resolution as ever. In dealing with the dispute between India and Pakistan over the State of Jammu and Kashmir, the United Nations has likewise found itself unable to get the parties to agree on a political settlement. Nevertheless, fighting has been brought to an end, and the United; Nations has played an important part in achieving that result.

The attempts which have been undertaken, primarily by specialists in international law, to define an international organization emphasize a variety of features which distinguish that social phenomenon. Some of the characteristics that have been mentioned include creation on the basis of an international agreement, the existence of a distinct personality of the organization separate from its individual members, the exhibition of a relative autonomy of will by the organs of the agency as compared with the will of the total of its members, etc. There is general agreement that an essential feature of an international organization is the possession of permanent organs; otherwise, there has so far been no consensus on the necessity for an international organization to possess any specific feature. For example, it can be demonstrated that there are no bases for particularly stressing, as a supposedly indispensable feature of such an organization, its possessing a separate personality and an autonomy of will, as is done by certain French authors.

It is sometimes instructive, as Holmes long ago pointed out to Watson, to begin by asking a few questions about dogs that do not bark in the night. Suez and the Congo are not the only major crises which have disturbed the United Nations. Yet they are the only ones to which it has responded by creating a true United Nations force. Why?

Two central tenets of dependency theory are supported by the analysis of the causes and consequences of the exchange rate policies of less developed countries (LDCs). First, one critical component—high partner trade concentrations—is recreated by the choice of exchange arrangements. Specifically, nations that havemaintained a dollar peg have significantly increased their concentration of trade with the United States since 1973. This occurs because of the exchange rate risk present in any transaction that involves a dollar-pegged currency and any other major currency against which it floats. Second, such an effect produces incentives for internal and external actors with an interest in the partner composition of future trade to influence the exchange rate policy of LDCs. Various components of the dependence situation that strengthen the role of such actors—partner trade concentrations, treaty arrangements, foreign aid, etc.—are significantly correlated with actual exchange rate practice. Thus, exchange rate policy is a linch-pin mechanism, in that it both manifests distortions produced by dependency and further acts to recreate a vital aspect of the situation that gave rise to the distortions.

For more than a century intellectuals and statesmen in Central America have kept alive a Bolivarian dream of fashioning a political unity in the isthmian region of the Americas. The formation of the Organization of Central American States in 1951 marked a signal accomplishment along a pathway strewn with many obstacles and previous frustrations. The establishment of this organization added a third regional grouping to the two already present in the Americas— the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Commission. It remains to be seen to what extent the three will be able to work together when questions affecting interests of the hemisphere as a whole arise.

This article is devoted to a consideration of the role (during the period 1946–54) of the International Court of Justice within the general context of international institutions existing to facilitate the pacific settlement of international disputes. For the development of international judicial techniques, this period is dominated by a novel, and unwelcome, phenomenon, that of the non-implementation of several of the Court's decisions. In this respect the position of the Court, as a principal organ of the United Nations, is not unique, for, in all its work, the United Nations has had to face the problem of the non-implementation of the resolutions of the principal organs. In making the following observations, the possibility that a decision will be taken in 1955 to convene a General Review Conference, in accordance with Article 109, paragraph 3, of the Charter and Article 69 of the Statute is kept in mind. However, it is not our intention to put forward any specific suggestions for amending either Chapter XIV of the Charter or the Statute. Until a careful and comprehensive review has been made of the working of the provisions of the Charter relating to the Court, and of the Statute, it would be premature to do so.

The eleventh session of the General Assembly reconvened on September 10, 1957, to consider further for nine meetings the question of Hungary in the light of the report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary. Prior to the general debate Mr. Shann (Australia), rapporteur of the special committee, pointed out that the members of the committee, as instructed by the Assembly, had directed their attention to the situation created by the intervention of armed forces of the Soviet Union in Hungary on October 24, 1956. Stressing the judicial and fair-minded attitude of the committee, Mr. Shann commented on the converging nature of the evidence it had procured in the testimony of witnesses, documentation provided by Hungarian newspapers and radio reports issued during the uprising, statements of the present Hungarian government, and information provided by governments with diplomatic representatives in Budapest at the time of the occurrence. Speaking on a point of order, the representative of Hungary, subsequently endorsed by the Soviet delegate, asserted that the issue under discussion concerned measures taken by the Hungarian government to crush a counter-revolutionary attack, a domestic issue beyond the competence of an international organization to investigate. He concluded that the establishment of the special committee had been illegal and, therefore, requested the General Assembly to remove the item from the agenda. In accordance with a ruling of the President of the Assembly, however, it was decided to proceed with the debate.

When the North Atlantic Treaty was negotiated in the critical days of 1948–1949, it was hoped that this arrangement might be helpful in assisting the contracting parties to build up sufficient strength to deter aggression in Europe and to augment their diplomatic influence so that they could negotiate with the U.S.S.R. from a more advantageous position than they had held since 1945.

The eleventh annual meeting of the Consultative Committee of the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic Development in South and Southeast Asia was held in Jogjakarta, Indonesia, November 11–14, 1959. Besides adopting its eighth annual report, the Committee approved the inclusion of Singapore as a full member and decided to continue the Colombo Plan for another five years from 1961, the date it was scheduled to end, with the understanding that the 1964 meeting of the Consultative Committee would consider a further extension. A communiqu'e issued at the close of the meeting noted evidence of the quickening pace of economic activity, recovery in agricultural production in many countries in the area, and growth in real per capita income. In addition, the Committee observed that the large increase in population was one of the most pressing problems faced by the area and committed itself to seek more information on this problem for inclusion in subsequent reports.

The fourteenth session of the Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) was held in New Delhi from February 7 through 24, 1961. In his address the President of the Assembly, Dr. Arcot Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, stated that among the many international organizations set up by the UN, WHO occupied a foremost place in its efforts to improve the conditions of millions of people in all parts of the globe. Dr. Mudaliar pointed to the contributions of the WHO regional offices in bringing the work of the organization more directly into contact with the countries concerned. WHO had achieved its most spectacular successes in programs designed not merely to control but to eradicate diseases of which the causative organisms were well known and with respect to which effective steps could be taken—in this regard Dr. Mudaliar mentioned the malaria eradication campaign. Other diseases of a communicable nature—smallpox, cholera, several of the water-borne diseases, and many others carried by insects—could hopefully lend themselves to similar eradication programs. Dr. Mudaliar also referred to the work of WHO in areas of the world stricken by natural or man-made disaster, and in particular to the organization's emergency work in the Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville). As for the future tasks of WHO, the President of the Assembly observed that although tuberculosis had been one of the four diseases that had been given priority by the first WHO Assembly, much still remained to be done to control it; the results of domiciliary treatment carried out in the city of Madras, India, he continued, gave some promise of success in the control and treatment of the disease. Dr. Mudaliar also singled out leprosy as a disease the organization should try to eradicate, and mentioned the problems of mental illness stemming from the stress and strain of modern society as being worthy of attention.

Much of the discussion and study in the field of international organization has long been beset by a sterile encounter between the “uncritical lovers” and the “unloving critics” of formal intergovernmental organizations, of which the UN family is the preeminent example. The former have seen in those institutions and their procedures precursors of a regime of international law, if not of a world government, characterized by greater rationality, order, and cooperation and by less conflict in interstate relations; they have often been mentally fixed on a dominant image of international order, an image whose flaws and other characteristics were well analyzed by John Ruggie several years ago. The latter have seen them largely as shadow plays, at best reflecting and at worst having nothing to do with the power relations among states, which are the real determinants of state behavior in an anarchic system. The split between the two corresponds roughly, if not identically, to another fundamental divide among theorists of international relations, namely, that between idealists and realists.

The Council of Ministers of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), consisting of the foreign ministers of the member countries, met in Dakar, Senegal, on August 2–11, 1963, under the chairmanship of Mr. Doudou Thiam (Senegal) in pursuance of the decisions taken at the Addis Ababa Conference of African heads of state and government.