In March 1949 it was announced that Ethiopia and the Union of South Africa had ratified the International Telecommunication Convention. The convention had also been ratified by the Byelorussian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR but with reservations on article 18. The Argentine Republic approved the documents signed at the Administrative Radio Conference, Atlantic City, 1947, and authorized their administrative application from January 1, 1949.

The General Council of the International Refugee Organization held its third (special) session in Geneva from June 28 to July 8, 1949. The Council was concerned chiefly with the problems of completion of the program of IRO by June 30, 1950, and future international action concerning refugees. Further recommendations on the termination of activities, as well as estimates of the number of persons who would remain registered for IRO services on June 30, 1950, were submitted by the Director-General. Mr. Tuck reported that this number would be approximately 304,000 of whom 172,000 would be receiving care and maintenance. Certain amendments to the recommendations of the Director-General were proposed and on July 6, 1949, the Council adopted a resolution instructing the Director-General to: 1) discontinue on August 31, 1949, with certain stated exceptions, all registration whereby refugees and displaced persons might be determined to fall within the mandate of the organization; 2) discontinue after December 31, 1949, admissions to displaced persons' assembly centers, and, after March 31, 1950, admissions to care and maintenance; 3) discontinue care and maintenance by June 30, 1950, for all persons other than those in process of repatriation or resettlement and those refugees or displaced persons who required permanent assistance, such as institutional care, and for whom other satisfactory arrangements would not have been completed; 4) institute an intensive counselling program with the aim of interviewing by November 1, 1949, all refugees and displaced persons receiving care and maintenance whose future had not been provided for; and 5) report to the fourth session of the General Council on the arrangements made for completing the several programs.

During November 1948 four sales of currency were made by the International Monetary Fund in response to requests for United States dollars by India, Norway, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. India purchased $8,060,000 for rupees. Exchanges of $500,000 each for Costa Rican colones and Nicaraguan cordobas were the Fund's initial transactions in those two Central American currencies. Norway sold 175,051.080 fine ounces of gold to the Fund in exchange for United States dollars at the official price of $35 per fine ounce. This gold was equivalent to $6,126,787.80, since the price paid by the Fund took into account certain expenses involved in the transaction. Thus, at the end of the month the Fund held $1,409,503,763.38 in gold.

The third annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund was held in Washington from September 27 to October 1, 1948 with Yun-wu-Wang, Minister of Finance of China, presiding. The opening and closing session were joint meetings with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Ratification by the fifteenth nation, Denmark, of the IRO Constitution on August 20, 1948 brought the Organization into official existence by fulfilling the constitutional requirement stipulating that fifteen nations contributing 75 percent of the operational funds needed by IRO must ratify the Constitution before the Organization could undertake autonomous operations. Following this ratification, the Preparatory Commission of IRO began its seventh and last meeting in Geneva on September 10, 1948, to complete arrangements for the convening of the IRO General Council. The commission 1) decided to convene the first session of the General Council on September 13, 1948; 2) requested the Executive Secretary to submit to the General Council for its consideration an amended text of the staff regulations and the draft financial regulations for IRO; 3) took note of the allocation of funds for the quarter from 1 July to 30 September, 1948; 4) noted with satisfaction the report of the Review Board for Eligibility Appeals; 5) decided not to establish a “date line” for the admission of new cases; and 6) adopted the provisional agenda for the first session of the General Council. On September 11 the chairman declared the final session of the Preparatory Commission for the International Refugee Organization closed, noting that it had fulfilled the duties assigned to it under the Agreement on Interim Measures.

The third session of the Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade adjourned at Annecy, France on August 13, 1949 after 133 bilateral tariff negotiations had been completed by 34 countries. Although tariff schedules were not expected to be made public until late in 1949, it was reported that a special exchange agreement had been signed among the Contracting Parties, similar to the International Monetary Fund articles of agreement. The Contracting Parties not members of the Fund were required to sign a separate exchange agreement.

A special meeting of the Executive Committee of the International Refugee Organization, scheduled to meet at Ottawa, was held instead at Geneva from January 25 to 29, 1949. The committee resolved, against determined British opposition, to lift the restriction of financial aid to immigrants to Palestine in effect since May 18, 1947, and authorized Director General William Hallam Tuck to re-imburse Jewish agencies, up to a maximum of $4,000,000 – the expenditure anticipated for Palestine migration in the 1948–1949 budget – for movements of refugees to Israel carried out between May 18, 1947 and January 1, 1949. The Director General was also authorized to support future Jewish refugee movements after consultation with the Palestine Conciliation Commission, to insure that IRO did nothing which would interfere with the commission's mandate to bring about the peaceful solution of the Palestine conflict. IRO support of future migration to Palestine depended on the availability of funds within the $4,000,000 limit after reimbursement of the agencies and on the result of negotiations with the Conciliation Commission. The resolution represented a compromise between those who felt that no limits should be placed on sponsorship of migration of eligible refugees to Palestine and those who argued that conditions in Palestine were too unstable and further complicated by an Arab refugee problem to justify IRO sponsorship. On January 26, 1949 the Secretary-General of the United Nations (Lie) and Stanton Griffis, director of United Nations relief for Palestine refugees, made a joint appeal to the governments for funds and supplies for the aid of more than 500,000 Palestine refugees, mostly Arabs, who had lost their homes during the fighting in Palestine.

On April 8, 1949, more than 500 delegates and assistants from thirty-four countries met in Annecy, France, for trade meetings convened to discuss tariff barriers and other problems of international trade. Twenty-three nations already adhered to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and eleven others wished to join it. The first of such meetings had been held in Geneva in 1947. The first meeting of the series held in Annecy concluded on April 22 after adopting a declaration defining the position of Palestine in relation to the agreement and adopting a decision to seek emergency measures to resolve the crisis of the Cuban textile industry. The meeting also studied charges of trade restrictions, plans for customs unions, problems of new tariff negotiations, African import restrictions that had introduced discriminations against imports from dollar and other hard currency areas, the dispute between India and Pakistan over rebate of the excise tax on exports to Pakistan from India, the South African–Southern Rhodesian customs union and modifications of various countries' tariff schedules introduced since 1947.

The International High Frequency Broadcasting Conference opened October 22, 1948 in Mexico City with fifty-six of the sixty-four member countries represented. The Conference established committees to consider frequency requirements of all countries, technical engineering problems and a frequency assignment plan for high frequency broadcasting in accordance with principles determined by the Atlantic City Conference in 1947.

The conference of the International High Frequency Board in Mexico City terminated April 10, 1949 after having been in session since October 22, 1948. The purpose of the meeting was to consider frequency requirements of all countries, technical engineering problems, a frequency assignment plan and generally “to put to an end the anarchy prevalent in high frequency broadcasting.” Although it was first suggested that all problems should be considered anew at a future meeting of a technical committee in France, the majority of delegations felt that a final agreement should be concluded at Mexico at the same time as the Basic Plan for allocations which would only need to be completed by technical considerations. A French proposal that only those countries which had signed the Mexico Agreement by June 15, 1949 might take part in the work of the technical committee was adopted by 43 votes to 1 with 5 abstentions. The agreement was approved by 50 of the 69 countries participating; the United States and the Soviet Union did not sign the agreement.

At its seventh session the Economic and Social Council took note of the report submitted by the ITU, and the Soviet representative (Arutiunian) raised a question concerning the fact that ITU had not admitted to membership the Baltic States and the Mongolian People's Republic. By a vote of 14 to 3 the Council rejected a Soviet proposal to ask the ITU to review the question.

The Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization held its sixteenth session in Paris on June 9, 1949. Following a Polish protest that the French Government had withheld a visa from a Polish delegate, it was moved by the Brazilian delegate (Carniero) that steps be taken to insure that diplomatic immunity be extended to all members of the UNESCO executive board as well as to members of the governing bodies of other international agencies. After discussing the question, the representatives considered the Director General's (Bodet) report on the activities of UNESCO for the period from February 1 to June 1,1949.

Pursuant to a decision taken at the first meeting of the Executive Committee of the Interim Commission for the International Trade Organization, the second session met in Geneva from August 25 to September 15, 1948. The committee reached agreement on several organizational and procedural questions to be submitted to the first session of the ITO conference and established several subcommittees to work on substantive matters including relations with the International Court of Justice, economic development, administrative questions and technical matters.

On March 22, 1949 Costa Rica ratified the constitution of the World Health Organization and on April 13 WHO was joined by Honduras, thus bringing the membership of the organization to 61.

The agreement by which the Pan American Sanitary Organization became the regional office for WHO in the western hemisphere was signed on May 24, 1949 in Washington by Dr. Brock Chisholm, Director General of WHO and Dr. Fred L. Soper, Director of the Pan American Sanitary Office. Under the agreement the office was to adopt and promote health and sanitary conventions and programs in the western hemisphere provided they were “compatible with the policy and programs of the World Health Organization and are separately financed.”

By April 1949 Australia had ratified the ITO Charter, contingent on its being put into effect by the United States and the United Kingdom. Other countries were awaiting action by the United States, where President Truman was about to submit the Charter to the Congress for decision. With the acceptance of the Havana Charter by twenty countries necessary for the creation of ITO, Eric Wyndham White, Executive Secretary of the Interim Commission, stressed the importance of bringing ITO into being without delay. He described the organization as essentially a business-like approach towards the reduction of trade barriers and the expansion of trade on a multilateral, permanent basis.

The Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization held its sixteenth session in Paris from June 9 to 15, 1949. At the first meeting Jaime Torres Bodet, Director-General, drew attention to the main points in his report on the activities of the organization since the fourteenth session. One of the questions which he considered essential and to which he drew the Board's attention was coordination between the United Nations and the specialized agencies as regards technical assistance to underdeveloped countries. In conformity with the decisions of the fifteenth (extraordinary) session of the Executive Board, UNESCO was represented by two members on a working party which met at Lake Success in March and drew up a series of projects for consideration by the United Nations Administrative Committee on Coordination. A second question concerned general education; the two missions sent by UNESCO to the Philippines and Siam had concluded their work with very encouraging results. The foundation of two new national commissions, those of India and Switzerland, was reported.

Advice and consent to ratification of the Convention of the World Meteorological Organization was given by the United States Senate on April 20, 1949. The United States instrument of ratification was deposited on May 4, 1949 in the archives of the United States Government, which had been designated by the convention as the depository government. The convention was to enter into force thirty days after the date of the deposit of the thirtieth instrument of ratification or accession. The United States was the seventeenth government to deposit its instrument of ratification. The other governments were: Australia, Byelorussian SSR, Finland, Iceland, India, Lebanon, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Rumania, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukrainian SSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United Kingdom and Yugoslavia.

The third session of the General Conference of UNESCO met in Beirut, Lebanon from November 17 through December 11, 1948, with 36 member nations represented and official observers from eight other countries. Jaime Torres Bodet, Julian Huxley. Paris was selected for the site of the fourth session in September 1949, and a budget of $7,780,000 was approved. During the session, Switzerland completed the requirements to become the 45th member nation and the application of Monaco was approved. Ceylon's application was referred to the Economic and Social Council for advice, while Israel withdrew its application.

The Second World Health Assembly met in Rome from June 13 to July 2, 1949 under the presidency of Dr. Karl Evang (Norway) and approved the program, policies and budget of the World Health Organization for 1950. Adopted by the Assembly and subsequently approved by the Executive Board was the regular budget of $7,893,000 of the usual contributions of member governments and a supplementary budget of $9,152,520 to be raised on a voluntary basis from member governments and used not only to extend the projects covered by the regular budget but to include projects under the United Nations technical assistance program for under-developed areas. By mid-summer Yugoslavia, Ceylon, the Dominican Republic, India and the United States had indicated their willingness to make contributions to the supplementary budget.

At the end of 1948 Julian Huxley, retiring Director-General of UNESCO, reported on the work accomplished by the organization during the year. In the social sciences considerable progress had been made in the study of tensions affecting international understanding, while a series of monographs had been written about the different ways of life of different national cultures and surveys had been commenced on ways to bring out ideas of the general public on their own and other countries. Modern techniques to change psychological attitudes were also being discussed.