The Fifth (Administrative and Budgetary) Committee of the General Assembly has always devoted a considerable amount of time and attention to the problem of the tenure of appointment in the Secretariat of the United Nations. At the 21st (1966) session, however, it went deeper than usual into the question whether and to what extent the international civil service should continue to be organized on a career basis. More specifically, it discussed the ratio of career as compared with noncareer appointments. In the debate the Western countries followed their habitual course: They upheld the career principle and opposed any extension of the practice of using permanent positions for temporary appointments. The Eastern European group similarly took its traditional line against the career system. The Afro-Asian delegates for their part were as usual mainly concerned with pushing their claims for a greater share of posts in the Secretariat; to that end they pressed for an increasing number of fixed-term appointments.

The United Nations is approaching a point where a decision must soon be reached concerning the expansion of its present facilities. Notwithstanding the increases which have been made in delegate seating in the General Assembly Hall, the Council chambers, and the conference rooms in recent years, these are now filled almost to capacity as additional political entities have been accorded membership. The delegates' lounge and dining room are uncomfortably crowded during Assembly sessions. In the Secretariat the staffs of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) have been moved to rented quarters in order to relieve overcrowding and to obtain adequate working space. The Secretary-General has reported to the General Assembly that the Headquarters buildings are now “completely occupied” and that plans must be made to provide adequate office space for the personnel expected to be on hand in the 1970's, assuming that the United Nations continues to remain an active force in international affairs.

The fifteenth session of the General Assembly of the United Nations which convened in New York in September 1960 marked an important turning point in the history of the Organization. The United Nations had been created primarily through the efforts of states with a European or European-derived political and social culture possessing a common history of political involvement at the international level. During its first ten years the Organization was dominated by the problems and conflicts of these same states. However, by 1955 the process of decolonization which has marked the post-1945 political arena began to be reflected in the membership of the United Nations. In the ten years preceding the end of 1955 ten new nations devoid of experience in the contemporary international arena and struggling with the multitudinous problems of fashioning coherent national entities in the face of both internal and external pressures joined the Organization. By 1960 the rising tide of decolonization had reached flood crest with the entry in that one year of seventeen new Members—sixteen of which were from Africa.

The great hope for United Nations peace forces is that they may become a ready means of pacifying small wars in underdeveloped areas—civil wars and border quarrels which inevitably will flare up out of the tensions of national development—in order to keep violence and the issues behind it from spreading beyond local bounds. The nightmare of Vietnam as well as the recent eruption in the Middle East bear out the awful truth that a conflict without great international significance, if unsolved and uncontrolled too long, can easily become a stake in big-power politics, producing even at best a rising level of international tension and at worst a terrifying increase in the level of violence. Crucial to the preservation of peace, then, is the settlement of small conflicts before they get bigger. This is not because the danger to peace comes, as it did in the 1930's, from an aggressor with an insatiable appetite which has to be stopped before it gets too strong but because each of the Great Powers, the United States, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and, increasingly, the People's Republic of China, is concerned that the others may take advantage of local conflict to extend their influence into the disturbed area. Therefore, even disputes of no great concern to any of them are indirectly a concern to all. The strengths of the Great Powers are so delicately balanced, the stakes of the competition so great, and the war potential of each so fearful that none is willing to allow another any new advantage.

Meeting at the request of the representatives of Canada and Denmark, the Security Council discussed the situation in the Middle East at its 1341st-1361st meetings, held on May 24-June 14, 1967.

Opening the debate on the adoption of the agenda, Nikolai T. Fedorenko (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) declared that his delegation did not believe there were sufficient grounds for a hasty convening of the Security Council in what he termed an artificially dramatic climate fostered by the representatives of certain Western powers. He observed that two members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), rather than any of the parties directly concerned, had asked for a meeting of the Council. To his delegation this indicated a desire to interfere in the affairs of other countries rather than a true concern for the peace and security of the Middle East.