The special provision in Article 109, paragraph 3, on review of the United Nations Charter resulted from the concern of many states that the five great powers, working in harness, would excessively dominate the organization. Most of the conference members at San Francisco resented the implication of permanent inferiority reflected in the great powers' special voting position in the Security Council. Although they feared that the Charter permitted too wide an application of the veto power, they nevertheless accepted it as necessary within limits.

The increasing manifestations of Soviet interest in the United Nations Technical Assistance Program and in the establishment of a Soviet “Point Four” program for the under-developed, non-Communist countries of southeast Asia are of crucial importance to the west. In great measure the ultimate defense of western civilization lies in its ability to guide the surging flow of Asian nationalism into constructive, stable and satisfying channels of economic, social and political reforms. Soviet interest in under-developed areas is not new, but since the death of Stalin, a precipitant and ingenious reversal of tactics has occurred. Nowhere has this interest been more evident than in the Economic and Social Council and in its subsidiary bodies. Though the changed Soviet tactics in no way signify a modification of the long term objectives of Soviet strategy, they do demand a corresponding flexibility and imaginativeness on the part of western diplomacy. By understanding past Soviet behavior, acquiring an accurate knowledge of early postwar Soviet policy toward underdeveloped areas, and investigating the rationale behind that policy, the direction and intensity of present Soviet policy may be better analyzed and viewed in its proper perspective.

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 author's first connection with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came on the 16th of December, 1950. It was at a time when the world situation seemed to be deteriorating rapidly. The Chinese had just entered the war in Korea and the Council of NATO was to meet in Brussels on December 18th to consider urgent action to strengthen and organize defenses against aggression, should it occur in Europe.

Fifth United Nations Technical Assistance Conference: At the Fifth United Nations Technical Assistance Conference, which met at Headquarters on November 26, 1954, under the presidency of Mr. Hans Engen (Norway), 56 governments pledged the equivalent of $12,264,000 to the 1955 expanded program of technical assistance; this amount represented an increase of 16 percent over the amount pledged by the same governments to the 1954 program. Of the countries which had contributed to the 1954 program, 19 did not announce their contributions to the 1955 program during the Conference, although several delegations, among them those of the United States, Japan, German Federal Republic, New Zealand and the Dominican Republic, assured the Conference that their governments were planning to make further contributions and that pledges would subsequently be announced.

Resumed Eighteenth Session

The eighteenth session of the Economic and Social Council was resumed at United Nations Headquarters with the Council's 831st meeting, on November 5, 1954, and concluded with its 834th meeting, on December 16, 1954. The Council decided on its basic program of work for 1955, and discussed the provisional agenda for its nineteenth session drawn up by the Secretary- General (Hammarskjold). Resolutions of the ninth session of the General Assembly referred to ECOSOC were dealt with as follows: 1) the General Assembly's request that the Commission on Human Rights complete its recommendations concerning international respect for the right of peoples and nations to self-determination was transmitted to that commission; 2) the question of establishing a world food reserve was entered in the provisional agenda of the Council's twentieth session; and 3) the Council heard a statement from the Secretariat that a report on the item ”international tax problems” would not be ready before 1956. The Council debated the question of re-establishing its discontinued Economic, Employment and Development Commission, and the possible terms of reference to be given it in the event that it should be re-established; without putting to a vote a draft resolution submitted jointly by the United States, United Kingdom, and Ecuador, under the terms of which the Council would decide not to re-establish the commission, the Council adopted by a vote of 9 to 8 with 1 abstention a Norwegian draft resolution under which consideration of the entire matter would be deferred until the Council's resumed twentieth session.

The fifteenth session of the Trusteeship Council opened at Headquarters on January 25, 1955, under the presidency of Miguel Rafael Urquia (El Salvador). The Council decided to postpone consideration of plans for economic development in Italianadministered Somaliland and of the visiting mission's report on this territory until its sixteenth session.

Lending Operations

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development made a loan on November 19, 1954, of $16.2 million to finance the foreign exchange costs of a thermal electric power plant in Bombay, India. The National City Bank of New York had agreed to participate in the loan without the Bank's guarantee to the extent of $1,364,000. The recipients of the loan, the Tata Hydro Electric Power Supply Co., Ltd., the Andhra Valley Power Supply Co., Ltd., and the Tata Power Co., Ltd., had already raised the equivalent of $6.2 million toward the rupee costs of the project ($11.3 million). The loan, which was for a period of 20 years, bore interest of 4¾ percent per annum, including the Bank's 1 percent commission.

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.

On December 24, 1954, Colombia purchased $25 million from the International Monetary Fund with Colombian pesos. The purchase, Colombia's first transaction with the Fund, was equivalent to 50 percent of Colombia's quota, and required a waiver under Article V, section 4, of the Fund's Articles of Agreement. Colombia under took the purchase with the understanding that its pesos would be repurchased from the Fund within a period of three of five years. The drawing was designed to meet payments difficulties of a temporary nature that had resulted in the development of commercial arrears, particularly with the United States; the difficulties were attributed to a sharp decline in the price of coffee and a slackening of demand for it, beginning about the middle of August 1954.

The annual report of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to the Economic and Social Council for the year 1953 stated that considerable progress had been made by the various countries during the year in developing or modernizing existing telecommunication networks, within the limits of technical and scientific progress and of credit available for investment in communications. The grid of telegraph and telephone circuits criss-crossing frontiers had been considerably tightened up and reinforced during 1953, important research work had been carried on, certain practical steps had been taken with a view to providing the public with semi-automatic international telephone service and a direct international telegraph subscribers' service, and the national broadcasting networks and television transmittal services had been expanded and improved. While the credit for these achievements, the report stated, was above all due to the specialists, no extension of telecommunication networks would have been possible without the intervention of the organs of ITU in the coordination of projects and in organizing cooperation between the various countries. The report contained information on ITU membership and on the organization and operation of the permanent organs of ITU, as well as a detailed summary of ITU activities during the year 1953, its relations with the United Nations and other international organizations, and its budgets for 1953 and 1954, for which the overall figures were respectively 6,225,100 and 6,367,500 Swiss francs, exclusive of United Nations technical assistance funds.

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

The ninth session of the contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ended on March 7, 1955. The principal obstacles to agreement before late January were felt to have been the reluctance of the United States to modify its policies on import quotas on agricultural products, the reluctance of countries adversely affected by this practice to give up their right to restrict imports of manufactures so long as the quotas continued, lack of agreement on extension of the previously negotiated tariff schedules beyond June 30, 1955, the question of agricultural subsidies as a whole, the exceptions to GATT to be permitted to a country in balance of payments difficulties, and the quantitative restrictions to be permitted under-developed countries.

Eighth General Conference

The eighth General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was held in Montevideo, Uruguay, from November 12 to December 10, 1954, under the chairmanship of Justino Zavala Muniz (Uruguay). Of the 72 UNESCO members, 69 attended the conference, seven of whom had become members since the last General Conference (Spain, Nepal, Libya, Chile, the Soviet Union, Byelorussia and the Ukraine) and three of whom (Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary) had resumed active participation after previously withdrawing. In addition, the Conference was attended by observers from non-member states, the United Nations and international and nongovernmental organizations.

Executive Board

The fifteenth session of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) was held in Geneva from January 18 to February 4, 1955, under the chairmanship of Dr. H. Hyde (United States). The Director-General's proposals for the provisional agenda of the eighth World Health Assembly, as amended, were approved by the Board. The Board recommended that the Assembly adopt the revised rules of procedure, which the Board had re-examined and amended in the light of comments received from governments. The Board also noted that it had carried out a study of the procedure for consideration of the annual program and budget by the Assembly, in accordance with the Assembly's request, and that it believed it would be useful for the Assembly committee on program and budget to set up a working party at the beginning of each Assembly session to make a review of the financial and budgetary aspects of the proposed program and budget estimates. Proposals relating to the establishment of committees and their terms of reference were also made to the eighth Assembly.

Executive Committee

The fifth session of the Executive Committee of the World Meteorological Organi-zation (WMO) was held in Geneva from August 25 to September II, 1954, and was devoted, in large part, to preparations for the second WMO Congress, scheduled to open on April 14, 1955. The Committee reviewed the plans for the WMO program for the second financial period (1956–1960) in the light of the experience of the organization and with special attention to requests of meteorological services, other specialized agencies and the United Nations. The financial and staffing implications of the pro-posed program were also reviewed. The Committee examined the status of the ternal relations of WMO, which had recently established relations with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and which had granted consultative status to nine non-governmental organizations. Proposed amendments to the organization's General Regulations were approved for submission to the Congress, along with amendments to the Internal Staff Regulations designed to bring them into greater conformity with those of other international organizations.

The Council of the ANZUS Pacific Security Pact met in Washington, D.C., on June 30, 1954, to survey the situation in southeast Asia in the light of concurrent developments. The Council members agreed that immediate action to bring about the early establishment of collective defense in southeast Asia was needed and further agreed that, should the French government be confronted, at the Geneva conference, with demands which would prevent an acceptable agreement regarding Indochina, the international situation would have been seriously aggravated. The three govern- ments were represented by their foreign ministers: Mr. Casey for Australia, Mr. Munro for New Zealand and Mr. Dulles for the United States.

Consultative Assembly

The first part of the sixth ordinary session of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe was held in Strasbourg from May 20 through 29, 1954; the second part of the session met from September 13 through 24, 1954. The third part of the session was scheduled to open on December 8, 1954. Mr. Guy Mollet (France, Socialist) was elected President of the session.

Deputies of the foreign ministers of the ECSC members met in Rome from September 22 through October 9, 1953, to examine in detail a draft statute for a European political community prepared by the Ad Hoc Assembly and submitted to the ECSC ministers on March 10, 1953. A meeting of the foreign ministers, originally scheduled to begin on October 22, 1953, opened in the Hague on November 26 under the chairmanship of Joseph Back (Luxembourg). At the conclusion of the meeting on November 28, the ministers issued a communique outlining their decisions. The ministers approved sections of the report of the deputies on their Rome meeting on institutional and economic matters on which unanimous agreement had been reached. An assembly was to be created as the lower house of the community representing the peoples of the community; an upper house representing states was also to be created. While it had been agreed that the lower house would be elected by direct universal suffrage, the methods had not yet been determined. The ministers exchanged views on the organization and powers of the executive branch of the proposed community but reached no decisions. The principle of the creation of a single European court was approved and a committee of jurists established to consider further legal questions involved in the creation of a political community. The ministers also agreed that the community would include, in ways yet to be determined, the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Defense Community. The ministers appointed a committeee to continue discussion of the political community and begin drafting the text of a treaty; it was to report to the ministers at a meeting in Brussels on March 30, 1954.

Defense production officials of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) met in Paris on January 25 and 26, 1955 to exchange views on defense production questions affecting the alliance as a whole. Among the subjects discussed were industrial mobilization, correlation of production programs, and standardization of arms. According to press reports, the principal significance of the meeting rested on the fact that many countries preferred this sort of consultation, perhaps developed as a permanent and recognized channel for action in the field, as an alternative to French proposals for a separate supra-national arms production agency.

On January 17, representatives of the seven signatories of the Western European Union (WEU) met in Paris to consider French proposals for the creation of a European arms control agency, commonly called an arms pool. According to press reports, the French plan envisaged the creation of an arms community whose functions would extend to standardization of arms, establishment of programs of production and placing of orders for arms in member countries, carrying into force of the programs, and planning and coordination of investments to develop production. It was understood that no extension of productive capacity could take place within the community without the permission of a central authority and that agreements would be made with the United States and Canada to integrate military aid programs and offshore procurement policies into the over-all program. The new organization would come into operation in two stages: the first, to extend to the end of 1956, would be a transitional stage in which decisions would be taken unanimously by representatives of governments choosing to belong to a military standardization committee and an armaments production committee; in the second stage, from the beginning of 1957, a definitive regime of an arms community would come into action, composed of a director and a permanent committee of ministers of defense under the authority of the WEU Council. Decisions of the permanent body would require the consent of two-thirds of its members, except on questions of standardization which would require unanimity. An alternative to the permanent committee envisaged in the second phase of the program would be the appointment of commissioners, independent of governments, by the WEU Council which would make decisions by a majority vote.