Finding a satisfactory voting formula for an international organization of “sovereign” states, such as the Security Council of the United Nations, is a different task from establishing rules of voting for a national legislative body. In an international body both the character of the work to be done and the composition of the body are governing factors. If the body has to make decisions involving the use of force, full respect for sovereignty by requiring unanimity permits the exercise of a liberum veto that blocks action. Simple rules of “democratic” usage by which the members are assumed to be equal in strength, though in fact they are not, cannot be applied, for this might pit weak numerical majorities against preponderantly powerful minorities. On the other hand, frankly to acknowledge the overweening might of a few and to establish a “dictatorship” by giving the most powerful members exclusive voting privileges is politically unacceptable and probably impracticable in our times. Therefore, some compromise has to be found, with reference to the duties and responsibilities of the organization and its composition, that will strike a workable balance between the inequalities of the members and a decent respect for the views and interests of the less powerful.

The fifth session of the Metal Trades Committee of the International Labor Organization (ILO) was held in Geneva from October 25 to November 5, 1954, under the chairmanship of Mr. E. C. Puig (Mexico). Representatives of 20 countries and the United Nations, as well as observers from a number of non-governmental organizations, attended the session, at which the following three agenda items were considered: 1) a general report, dealing with steps taken by various countries and the ILO Office in the light of actions of previous sessions of the Committee and recent events and developments in the metal trades; 2) regularization of production and employment at a high level in the metal trades; and 3) methods of labor-management cooperation in metal-working plants. In the matter of labor-management relations, the Committee adopted, by 91 votes to 11, a memorandum concerning practical methods of labor-management cooperation, intended as a guide to employers and workers, which outlined matters suitable for joint consultation and suggested some guiding organizational principles and methods of cooperation. In the memorandum on the regularization of production and employment, adopted by the Committee by 71 votes to 33 with 3 abstentions, the general principles set forth were that 1) the proper goals of social, political and economic policy were to achieve full employment and to ensure steady progress towards higher living standards, 2) the benefits of higher productivity in the metal trades should be distributed equally among labor, capital and consumers, 3) sharp economic crises resulting in widespread unemployment were avoidable through appropriate action, and 4) sustained full employment could be built only on a solid foundation of adequate consumer purchasing power, of steadily rising living standards, of greater economic stability, especially for the lower-income groups, and of rapid economic development of under-developed countries.

From its founding the United Nations has been a frequent source of puzzlement and embarrassment to Soviet policy makers. Given the reticence of Soviet statesmen, past and present, and the inaccessibility of Soviet diplomatic archives, we can only speculate about the expectations which were in the minds of Premier Joseph Stalin and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov when they gave their approval to the Moscow Four-Nation Declaration on General Security of October 1943, the first great-power commitment to the establishment of a new international organization. For United States policy makers, certainly, this unprecedented commitment, buttressed by the Vandenberg Resolution, marked an important change in their nation's perspective and purpose. It represented a new determination, even if a vaguely defined one, to cooperate with other nations in establishing and maintaining a better foundation for international peace and order. For the Soviet leaders, who were celebrating the grim liberation of Kiev in the midst of the Moscow Conference, there was probably little time, and certainly no leisure, to speculate about the possible congruence or incongruence of Soviet ambitions with the stabilizing and even static assumptions that underlay a revived and expanded peacekeeping league of states.

The Security Council at its 1027th to 1033rd meetings, April 17–24, 1963, considered this question, which was brought to the attention of the Council in a letter dated April 10, 1963, from the Chargé d'Affaires of the permanent mission of Senegal, addressed to the President of the Security Council. The government of Senegal called upon the Security Council to discuss the violations of Senegalese air space and territory on the border between Senegal and Portuguese Guinea. The letter cited the violation of air space by four Portuguese aircraft, the dropping of grenades on the village of Bouniack on April 9, 1963, and three similar violations of territory and air space which occurred on December 16, 1961, and which were drawn to the attention of the President of the Security Council on December 22, 1961.

Two new experiments in international cooperation, seldom publicized and very little known even to the specialist in international affairs, have been taking place in recent years in the Caribbean area and in the South Pacific. In each instance, colonial nations have established international organizations, advisory in character, to foster economic and social advance. Without political functions, these two organizations — the Caribbean Commission and the South Pacific Commission — have embarked on the task of raising standards of living and advancing the general welfare of the non-self-governing peoples of the area. The first of these, the Caribbean Commission, was the progenitor of the regional system and has served in large measure as a model for the later South Pacific Commission; the story of its development, with the participation first of two and later of four colonial governments, is therefore particularly interesting to follow.

The following summary covers the activities of the Security Council from its 783d meeting on August 20, 1957, through its 790th meeting on September 9, 1957.

World food institutions include the whole range of policies and programs that affect the production and distribution of food, including national programs as well as those of an international nature. Trade liberalization, both international and intranational, can contribute significantly to the expansion of food production. Unfortunately, recent suggestions, such as the Integrated Programme for Commodities, will result in increased trade barriers, a reduction in specialization of production and increased price instability. If there are appropriate policies—adequate incentives for farmers, increased support for research and available supplies of modern farm inputs—food production in the developing economies can be increased more rapidly than population. Food security in the developing countries could be increased significantly by a grain insurance program that supplied grain to meet all production shortfalls below trend level production. Such a program should be the major source of food aid to the developing countries in order to avoid disincentives to local farmers.

The United Nations provides the setting for the expression and carrying out of United States policies on a wide range of subjects of international concern. This article is about how those policies are formulated and expressed in UN organs.

In January 1974 the Council of Ministers of the European Community issued a resolution calling for the coordination of the science and technology policies of the member countries. This initiative came after several years of largely unrewarded efforts by the European institutions to bring a measure of Community-wide coherence in national R&D programs and objectives. Despite the development of alternative decision-making and implementation procedures, the Community's impact on national activities was on the whole limited in scope, confined to programs of marginal importance and more concerned with the joint execution of specific research tasks than with the political motives and intentions of the member governments. A review of the 1974 resolution's effects, principally through the work of the CREST committee, demonstrates that the multiple obstacles to policy coordination have yet to be overcome. These obstacles stem from a) varying conceptions of the policy coordination task, b) the discrepancies and inadequacies in national science policy formulation, c) deficiencies in the perspectives and procedures of Commission officials and national delegations, and d) a variety of constraints which restrict the domain of possible Community intervention.

The Trusteeship Council held its twentyfirst session at UN headquarters from January 20 to March 28, 1958, under the presidency of Mr. Emilio Arenales Catalan (Guatemala). The provisional agenda, adopted by the Council, included the examination of the annual reports on the administration of Ruanda-Urundi, the Cameroons under British administration, the Cameroons under French administration, and Tanganyika and also petitions relating to trust territories, questions referred to the Council by the General Assembly, and other matters.

On July 30, 1962, the government of Syria presented a formal complaint against alleged United Arab Republic interference in its internal affairs to Abdul Khaliq Hassouna, Secretary-General of the Arab League. The Secretary-General at Syria's request said he would start preparations for holding an extraordinary meeting of the League's Council to discuss the complaint, but it would take at least five days.

The Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held its 55th session in Paris, from November 23, 1959, to December 5, 1959. Under the heading, Execution of the Program, the Board decided, inter alia: 1) to approve the list of invitations to the 23d International Conference on Public Education; 2) to authorize the Director-General to convene, in 1960, a meeting of representatives to the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, if hedeemed it appropriate to do so; 3) to invite member states to submit names of great personalities and to call attention to historic events in the field of education, science, and culture which they planned to commemorate, in conformity with a decision adopted at its previous session; 4) to extend assistance to the governments of the United Arab Republic and the Sudan to obtain, through the Organization, largescale international assistance for safeguarding the monuments of Nubia which were in danger of disappearing, and, further, to authorize the Secretary-General, among other things, to set up an international committee to assist him in the organization of a world-wide campaign designed to secure contributions for whatever international action was to be undertaken; 5) to approve the list of invitations to the 1960 World Conference on Adult Education; and 6) to recommend to the General Conference the inclusion among the activities to be carried out in the 1961–1962 period of an international conference to study ways of improving international transmission of news, to be convened in Havana, Cuba.

The 1962 annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Bank, held in conjunction with the annual meetings of the International Development Association (IDA) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), took place in Washington, D.C. on September 17–21, 1962, under the chairmanship of Mr.Ahmed Zaki Saad, Governor for Saudi Arabia. In the annual address, Mr. Eugene R. Black, President of the International Bank, summarized some of the achievements of the Bank and its affiliates in the past year. He also commented on the external economic difficulties facing the developing countries and pointed out some of the implications of these difficulties as they affected the amount and kind of aid the developing countries needed.

As the United Nations stands on the threshold of its third decade, every Member of the Organization will do well to think about the kind of UN it wants, for that is what may well be achieved.

The United Nations Advisory Committee on the Application of Science and Technology to Development has said:

The considered view of the Committee is that, in present circumstances, the wider and more intensive application of existing knowledge, suitably adapted to local conditions, provides the best prospect of securing rapid advancement in the developing countries.

Nearly thirty-five years have gone by since the signing of the Treaty of Versailles brought into existence a new international entity, the territory under mandate or trusteeship. Histories of the peace negotiation, depending on the prejudices or the personalities of their authors, represented the system as the creation of a group of impractical idealists or as the ultimate Surrender to militant colonialism. Only recently has it proved feasible to examine much of the evidence, to discover the effects of the system on the territories themselves, and to draw a few conclusions.

Weighted voting at the UN has been suggested for various reasons: (1) to overcome the problems of the mini-states now being admitted, with one vote just as the very large states have; (2) to prevent voting in the General Assembly from swinging any further in the anti-West, anti-Israel direction; (3) to satisfy the requirements of democratic justice: i.e., “one person-one vote,” not “one nation-one vote”; and, (4) to reflect more realistically the distribution of power among nations.

Originally designated by the terms of its Constitution as an international agency for the collection and dissemination of information in the field of nutrition, food, and agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations developed a much wider field of activity during 1946, its first working year. Recognizing the need for an international agency with real administrative powers, the FAO assumed the task of helping to ameliorate the world food crisis, while at the same time setting up an organization for long-range planning and statistical work.