Mr. C. MALIK pointed out that, of the thirty-eight substantive items on the provisional agenda (A/585) and supplementary fist (A/629) of the third session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, twenty-one and a half were concerned with international economic, social, health and related problems, or with international cultural and educational co-operation. According to Article 60 of the Charter, responsibility for advancing the work in that wide field was vested in the General Assembly and, under its authority, in the Economic and Social Council.
Two Main Committees of the Assembly, namely the Second Committee dealing with economic matters and the Third Committee with social, humanitarian and cultural matters, as well as the Joint Committee of the two, were set apart exclusively for reviewing and recommending decisions on the topics in that important domain. Furthermore, some of the aspects of the economic and social responsibilities of the United Nations were also referred to the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Committees of the Assembly for consideration. Thus, while no judgment of their importance was necessarily implied, it would be seen that 57 per cent of the substantive items of the agenda dealt with economic, social and cultural matters; that practically half of the Main Committees would devote their time to the examination of these questions, and that one of the principal organs of the United Nations, namely, the Economic and Social Council, worked all the year round on the concerns of that general field.
Mr. Malik stated that he would therefore review in his present speech the achievements and challenges of the United Nations in the economic and social realm. The delegation of Lebanon would have ample opportunity to express its views on the other important items on the agenda in the appropriate Committees to which they would be referred. In some of those other items the Lebanese delegation was deeply and critically interested. That was especially the case with regard to the problem of Palestine, to which there could be no abiding solution without justice, equity and agreement. An imposed solution would never work, it would sooner or later prove illusory in the extreme. But the Prime Minister of Lebanon, the head of the delegation, would adequately express the attitude of his Government on that question in the appropriate Committee. For the present, Mr. Malik said he would concentrate his attention exclusively on the economic, social and cultural activity of the United Nations, partly on account of his association with the Economic and Social Council, partly on account of his country’s dominant interest in that field, but partly also on account of his conviction that the economic, social, cultural and spiritual concerns of man were supreme.
It was at once interesting and disturbing that, in the initial general debates of the two preceding sessions of the General Assembly, most of the speakers had paid relatively little attention to economic and social matters. That had not been true to the same extent of the present session, for so far there had been persistent reference to the positive achievements and promise of the Economic and Social Council. It was especially gratifying and encouraging to hear the representative of the United States of America., Mr. Marshall (139th meeting,), the representative of the United Kingdom, Mr. Bevin (144th meeting), and the representative of New Zealand, Mr. Thorn (144th meeting) and others stress the importance of the work of the Council.
But, in the past, speakers had been almost wholly absorbed in political issues. If it was not the veto, it was the «Little Assembly». If it was not the «Little Assembly», it was warmongering. If it was not warmongering, it was Korea. If it was not Korea, it was certainly Greece or Palestine. The result had been that the United Nations had come to be identified in the public eye with the sort of problem and atmosphere prevailing in the Security Council and in the First Committee of the Assembly.
Four reasons had doubtless conspired to bring that situation about.
First, the public fed on the sensational and the negative. There was less interest in or patience with the quiet, the unobtrusive, the positive. As the public was intrigued to the utmost by political controversy, rather than by social and economic construction, the open disagreements in the Security Council and in the First Committee suited its predilection perfectly.
Secondly, a pre-condition of the real flowering of the social and economic activity of the United Nations had from the very beginning been the existence of genuine peace and confidence among nations. But everyone knew that peace was not yet established; that there was a fundamental, pervasive political uncertainty. In such a political and psychological atmosphere, how could genuine international co-operation in the economic and social field really occur?
Thirdly, the political issues on which United Nations leadership had concentrated were admittedly of decisive importance. The veto, warmongering, Palestine, atomic energy; those and like matters certainly deserved the attention which they had aroused.
Finally, it had to be confessed that the Member Governments in many cases still thought in terms of the concepts of the League of Nations rather than of the United Nations. They had not yet sufficiently understood that international economic, social and cultural co-operation was of the very essence of the new world Organization. They tended, therefore, for the most part, to send to the General Assembly politicians to whom political issues were clear and decisive, rather than economists, sociologists and thinkers, who saw everything ultimately as a function of the spirit and mind of man, and of basic social and material conditions. Many Governments and their representatives still thought only in terms of position, security and balance of power; they still lived in the age of the League of Nations.
Doubtless, all those factors had contributed to the exaggeration of the political at the expense of the economic, social and spiritual in the deliberations of the United Nations. That exaggeration, however, must be corrected.
In order that the Assembly might better see the full scope of its economic and social tasks, Mr. Malik wished to make a general review of the origins, structure and achievements, such as they were, of the Economic and Social Council, the organ of the United Nations charged with the promotion of international collaboration towards the great positive human goals suggested in Article 55 of the Charter, « higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development ...fundamental freedoms for all». He wished further to make a few critical observations concerning the essential and accidental limitations of the world Organization in social, economic and cultural international co-operation, and in the light of that criticism, to turn to certain proposals which either could be given effect within the framework of the Charter or required fundamental Charter revision. Finally, he desired to bring into greater prominence and sharper relief two of the most important enterprises in that field.
At the San Francisco Conference representatives of many Governments had been quick to grasp the double importance of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals for an Economic and Social Council; namely, economic and social justice both as a necessary prerequisite for enduring peace and as an end in itself. It was true that the architects of the Dumbarton Oaks working paper had been, in 1944, primarily preoccupied with questions of security, adjudication and trusteeship, and had given only a secondary place to the proposed innovation in international co-operation. But, at San Francisco, many voices had at once urged that the proposed Economic and Social Council should he established as a principal organ of the United Nations, and throughout the world many peoples had centred their hopes for an enduring and growing peaceful order upon its dynamic operation.
The first reason why all Governments should attach great significance to the introduction of a new structural element not found in the League of Nations had been given by Mr. Ford, the representative of Australia, who had said: «A permanent system of security can be made effective and acceptable only if it has a foundation in economic and social justice, and real international stability can be achieved only by promoting measures of economic advancement as well as by maintaining security».
The dependence of security upon the realization of justice had first been interpreted with direct reference to the organs of the United Nations by Mr. Aglion, the representative of France, when he had stated: « If the Economic and Social Council is successful in its task of preparing the future basis of peace by securing effective international co-operation to ensure the rights of man and to ensure the essential freedoms, then we consider that we will never need the coercive measures which are provided under other parts of the Charter through the Security Council. »
Although war still raged both in Asia and Europe when the San Francisco Conference was convened, the delegates of the United Nations, in the exalted spirit of that moment, had been capable of looking further than the mere usefulness of justice and freedom for the securing of order and peace. Again, Mr. Ford had stated clearly the conviction of all when he said: «Apart from the relationship of welfare to security, welfare is an end in itself. Greater welfare, employment for all, and rising standards of living for the masses have been promised in international declarations, such as the Atlantic Charter, and in the national declarations of policies of most of the socially-advanced countries of the world. All this has been pledged. It is necessary to redeem the pledge. The pledge should be written into the Charter of the world Organization as an objective, but that is not enough. Suitable machinery must be provided for the progressive fulfilment of the pledge».
The gathering at San Francisco had so clearly perceived the indispensable and dynamic role which the future Economic and Social Council should play in world affairs that practically every one of the amendments to the original proposals which were adopted with reference to the Council, often unanimously, aimed at extending its scope and the means at its disposal. There had been a ground-swell of conviction — especially among the medium-sized and smaller nations — that international economic and social co-operation must not be an appendix to the political work of the United Nations, but should share with it the best efforts of all nations.
As early as 31 October 1944, the Mexican Government had issued a memorandum on the Dumbarton Oaks proposals. Referring to the Economic and Social Council, it spoke of: « ... the advisability of such a Council being included among the principal organs of the United Nations... In fact, the Economic and Social Council, which constitutes a praiseworthy innovation with respect to the League system, will, in the field of its competence... be the equivalent of the Security Council in the juridical-political field. The latter Council will occupy itself with organizing the necessary machinery for obtaining ‘freedom from fear’... while the former... will be entrusted with an analogous task with respect to ‘freedom from need’».
Mr. Anthony Eden, in his opening address, had stressed the « equal importance » of economic and political problems when he said: «... I have laid emphasis on the provision of international machinery for the settlement of political disputes. But of equal importance with this is the solution of economic problems which, if untended, can themselves sow the seeds of future war. This will be the task of the Economic and Social Council which finds its place in the proposals now before you. It is our duty to ensure that this Council shall be well adapted to play its full part in our new structure of peace».
Those views had prevailed, and that broad conception of the Economic and Social Council was now enshrined in the Charter in Article 7 and in Articles 55 to 72. The Economic and Social Council had been constituted as one of the principal organs of the United Nations, and had been declared responsible, under the authority of the General Assembly, for the discharge of all the functions set forth in Chapter IX — in short, for the promotion of such economic, social, health, cultural and educational standards, especially with regard to the observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, as would lead towards «the creation of those conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations». Thus, at the moment the final text of the Articles on the Economic and Social Council was being approved after weeks of elaboration, it had been possible for Mr. Arutiunian, the USSR representative, to say on behalf of his delegation: «I believe that Committee II/3 did a serious and fine work, having considered all the principal problems of machinery for international economic and social co-operation within the scope of the international Organization. Our feeling is that the arrangements for the international economic and social co-operation are very important for the success of the international Organization. The lasting peace to come will depend, to a great extent, on the development of the international economic and social co-operation of the United Nations ».
It had also been possible for Field-Marshal Smuts, the distinguished President of Commission II under which the work of Committee 3 had been accomplished, to declare: «The Charter makes three important innovations and introduces three new subjects. One is the matter of economic and social arrangements including provision for the Economic and Social Council. Another is regional arrangements, and the third is the trusteeship arrangements. These three subjects are new, and they are all important, but I think I may say without fear of contradiction that much the most important of these three is... the economic and social arrangements and the Economic and Social Council.»
In his concluding address President Truman had been able to state: «A just and lasting peace cannot be attained by diplomatic agreement alone, or by military cooperation alone. Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and by social injustice. The Charter recognizes this fact for it has provided for economic and social co-operation as well. It has provided for this co-operation as part of the very heart of the entire compact.»
The aims of the Economic and Social Council lay therefore at the very heart of the compact made by Members of the United Nations. What that Council, in fact, was, and what it had done plainly deserved consideration.
Since the economic and social tasks undertaken had been so many-sided, flexible and varied machinery had had to be developed. The Preparatory Commission in the closing months of 1945, the first part of the first session of the General Assembly in the opening weeks of 1946, and the first four sessions of the Economic and Social Council held within the space of the fourteen months which began in January 1946, had envisaged and authorized the basic organizational structure of the Council as it was at present. At the first and second sessions of the Council nearly every member had found an occasion to salute and welcome the new type of body consecrated to international economic and social co-operation, and especially memorable statements had been made by the representatives of Belgium, Canada, China, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Their whole tenor of expectancy and joy was perhaps best conveyed in an observation of Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar, the distinguished first President of the Economic and Social Council, to whom the Council owed so much in respect of both its conception and initiative, who said:
« It has been realized more clearly than ever before by all the delegations which have attended the United Nations — and by none more so than the members of the Economic and Social Council — that on the work of this Council, on the manner in which it tackles its responsibilities, on the ability which it possesses to solve intricate economic problems of a complicated nature, depends the chance of achieving real security and peace in the world of the future. It is in that spirit that I am sure all of us who have become members of the Economic and Social Council will work; it is with that spirit that I am sure we shall be animated».
The result of the original organizational labours of the Council had been a keenly articulated set of inter-related institutions. Working directly under the Council were nine functional Commissions dealing with problems varying from narcotic drugs to the status of women and three regional Economic Commissions concerned with Europe, Asia and the Far East, and Latin America respectively, and with it were associated a group of operational projects such as the International Children’s Emergency Fund. Eight international conferences about special problems had been instigated by the Council, and, in some cases, arrangements had been completely prepared under its guidance; thirteen inter-governmental organizations had been or were being brought into relationship with the United Nations as specialized agencies through agreements negotiated by the Council; and sixty-nine non-governmental organizations had been brought into consultative status through arrangements worked out by the Council. The branches of the Secretariat dealing with all those activities had been correspondingly expanded. The Economic and Social Council reviewed, directed and co-ordinated all that multifarious activity in the course of two or three intensive sessions every year, and it had so far held 225 plenary meetings. The total volume of work accomplished by the several groups of institutions poured into the pool of General Assembly business through the yearly report of the Economic and Social Council and through the appropriate sections of the annual report of the Secretary-General.
Out of the dismal recent past of international anarchy and national autarchy in the economic, social and cultural realms, a faint glimmer of a pattern was thus beginning to emerge through the work of the Economic and Social Council and its subsidiary and related organs. Co-ordinating the efforts of those manifold contributors to the processes of co-operation during the three previous years of tension and continuing crises, the Council had made heavy and growing demands upon the Secretariat of the United Nations, which had established well over 400 posts in the economic and social fields and which had, to cite a purely formal measure of the work involved, produced in the last year more than 95,000 original pages of documents, or, with all translations and copies more than 70 million impressions. During the Assembly’s debates on social and economic issues, it was important for that body to bear in mind the sheer bulk of the activities of the largest Council of the United Nations, but it was far more important to see clearly the total structure and to appraise the typical achievements of the Council and its related bodies.
Looking first at the functional Commissions, Mr. Malik said the following activities deserved to be noted. The Economic and Employment Commission had been the source of one of the first documented pictures of war devastation in Europe and of the specific short-term and long-term problems involved in recovery; the Transport and Communications Commission had initiated improvements in national passport and frontier regulations and in the international organization of both maritime shipping and inland transport; the Fiscal Commission had launched valuable research on public finance and public debt and prepared the establishment of an authoritative fiscal information service; the Statistical Commission had not merely continued the services formerly provided by the League of Nations but had developed a central statistical unit for all United Nations organs, and associated organizations and prepared a programme destined to improve the usefulness of the censuses which many Governments were planning to take in 1950 as well as the permanent comparability of national statistics; the Population Commission, working closely with the Statistical Commission, had in preparation a demographic yearbook and studies on migratory movements and population trends; the Social Commission, pursuing a wide variety of practical tasks, had been particularly effective in strengthening international agreements concerning the suppression of traffic in women and children, as well as in contributing to the training of social welfare workers; the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, having taken over the functions formerly fulfilled in that field by the League of Nations, had forged ahead with a massive attack upon the whole problem of the production of such drugs for non-medical use; the Commission on the Status of Women had accomplished pioneer work in surveying the actual situation of women all over the world with regard to their political, economic, educational, civil and social rights, and the Commission on Human Rights had elaborated texts embodying the principles upon which not only the advance but indeed the very survival of all civilization depended.
The four operational projects of the United Nations, bearing directly upon the lives of millions of people and involving the expenditure of many millions of dollars, had all been in the humanitarian field.
The urgency of the refugee problem, when UNRRA had closed down, had compelled the Council to set up its own special Committee on Refugees and Displaced Persons, which had led to the establishment of the Preparatory Commission of the International Refugee Organization. As that sorely-needed inter-governmental agency was slowly coming into being, the Preparatory Commission had had to take concrete action, and it had, in the year beginning 1 July 1947, seen to the repatriation or resettlement of more than 200,000 persons, while continuing to maintain 625,000 more.
The Advisory Committee on Social Welfare Services’ programme constituted a second operational project. That programme made social welfare experts, as well as training in that field, available to countries requiring such aid, and developed a variety of rehabilitation services for special categories of the populations of war- devastated and under-developed regions. Requests for such help had been received from thirty-two countries in 1947 and from forty-nine countries during the first half of 1948.
In order that private individuals might contribute directly to the relief of the suffering of the widest category of sufferers in the present catastrophic times, the United Nations Appeal for Children — a call to the citizens of the world to give a day’s pay for the relief needs of children of whatever nationality, race and religion — had been carried out by a unit of the Secretariat under the policy direction of the Council. While the full results of that appeal were not yet known, it was enormously significant that fifty-two nations had undertaken to organize such an appeal and that the final returns from seven countries and the preliminary reports of seventeen others indicated that the equivalent of 16 million dollars would be contributed.
It was, however, the fourth of the operational projects, the International Children’s Emergency Fund, that was designed to be the United Nations’ continuing instrument for the alleviation of the suffering of children, an instrument which must be strengthened and maintained as long as war devastation and dislocation continued to keep more than 200 million of the world’s children in misery.
In the fifteen months of its operation, the International Children’s Emergency Fund had brought regularly a supplementary meal to more than four million children and nursing or pregnant mothers in over twelve European countries. It had embarked upon an anti-tuberculosis vaccination programme which would reach more than 50 million children in Europe alone, and it was starting an anti-venereal disease project and a regional malaria-control project for its special groups children and mothers. The feeding programme in Asia was just getting under way. Those indispensable services had required the allocation in 1948 of funds amounting to 68 million dollars, or about twice the budget of the United Nations itself a sum almost entirely contributed by the Governments of twenty-one countries, especially by the Government of the United States of America which, by act of Congress, held itself ready to give seventy-two dollars for every twenty-eight dollars contributed in the aggregate by other Governments. Yet the Board of the International Children’s Emergency Fund had had to report that its work had only helped a small part of the mass of children who needed its aid. A minimum programme for 1949 was budgeted at 78 million dollars, a sum which could be attained only if Governments would contribute at least 20 million dollars more than they had so far pledged.
As operational projects under the Council had made direct attacks upon the colossal needs of many war victims, the inter-governmental conferences and the agreements negotiated with intergovernmental agencies had been means by which the Council had attempted to attack fundamental and sometimes long-standing problems of society as a whole. Thus, in four preparatory and four plenipotentiary conferences initiated by the Council, the World Health Organization, the International Trade Organization, and the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization had been created. In other international or technical conferences held or to be held, such subjects as freedom of information, passports and frontier formalities, relief needs after the termination of UNRRA, world statistical collaboration, housing and town and country planning, the restriction of the production of narcotic drugs, road and motor transport, and the conservation and utilization of natural resources had been or soon would be treated.
Co-ordination of the activities and work programmes of thirteen inter-governmental organizations was gradually becoming an invaluable reality. Together with the three newest of the organizations just mentioned, the group of specialized agencies in official relationship with the United Nations through the Economic and Social Council now included: the International Labour Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the World Health Organization, the Universal Postal Union, the International Telecommunications Union, and the recently completed International Refugee Organization.
In still another relationship the Council had, in accordance with the Charter, opened the way for the United Nations to become something other than exclusively an assembly of Governments: sixty-nine qualified non-governmental organizations had been accorded consultative status. Through that novel relationship the United Nations had the benefit of communication with millions of human beings through their own voluntarily chosen associations.
The extremely complex diversification of functions under the Council might produce the erroneous impression that the Council was nothing other than the sum total of the activities of its subordinate or related organs. In point of fact, the Council had an independent and separate life of its own. That life was revealed in its two or three sessions a year, when eighteen nations, elected by the General Assembly, met together in council for the examination of an agenda originally drawn up from items proposed by other principal organs of the United Nations, by Members of the United Nations, or by the subordinate or related organs and organizations. During that examination the Council exercised its original functions of reviewing, criticizing, judging, directing and recommending.
The Council had a direct relationship to the other principal organs of the United Nations, which was defined in precise terms in the Charter, but the subordinate or related organs had no such relationship except through the Council.
Nor was the Council constituted in the same manner as its Commissions. While membership in the Council was by States, membership in the eight functional Commissions was only indirectly by States; both the Secretary-General and the Council had in principle a say in the determination of the representatives on those Commissions. The Council might and did make or initiate studies and reports with respect to the matters which fell within its competence; it might and did prepare conventions and call international conferences. The Council might and did furnish information to the Security Council when asked to do so; it might perform services at the request of Members of the United Nations and at the request of specialized agencies. All that was written in the Charter, and conferred upon the Council an original autonomy of its own, altogether apart from the subordinate or related organs.
Finally, the Council was a unique international forum on economic, social and cultural matters. When its debates achieved that quality of depth and detachment which should characterize them, they revealed a unique confrontation of ultimate doctrines and philosophies in the wide range of subjects covered. For all those reasons it was possible to affirm that the Council as such had an independent, original and significant being of its own.
Mr. Malik pointed out that he was fully alive to the essential and accidental limitations and difficulties of the Economic and Social Council. Its volume of business was increasing at a terrific rate, so that in spite of the highest possible pressure of work during its two previous sessions it had had to postpone a number of important items for sheer lack of time. The high pressure under which the Council worked, by comparison with any other organ of the United Nations, had in certain instances affected the quality of its output.
Procedural tangles, sometimes natural, but often artificially induced, had been a factor in delaying business. The Committee on Procedure was to review the rules of procedure before the next session of the Council; but even the most perfect set of rules could never prevent their possible manipulation when there was fundamental distrust and great issues were at stake. In that respect a Council of sovereign nations was essentially different from any national body. Propaganda speeches were potent weapons in the war of ideas, and representatives had not been loath to make effective use of that weapon.
The quality of representation had been high on the whole; despite that fact there had in many instances been a tendency to subordinate the economic and social to the political. Thus the original autonomy of the economic and social aspects was in danger of being lost. Governments tended in some cases to issue rigid instructions, with the result that the necessary process of accommodation and compromise became impossible. When political considerations thus dominated, the Council degenerated into a mere forum where independent national policies brutishly clashed. That, however, was obviously a derogation from the original integrity of the Council as a constructive, co-operative, deliberative, technical, supreme organ of the United Nations.
There was then a real decline from the spirit and vision of San Francisco. If that decline persisted, the Council would increasingly find itself dealing with petty matters. It would thus fail to rise to the great challenge of the age which had been so keenly felt at San Francisco and to which its creation had been the direct response.
The Council had concentrated on economic and social questions. It had done practically nothing in the cultural field, but had tended consistently to relegate every cultural problem to UNESCO. The Charter, however, laid original cultural responsibilities upon the Council altogether apart from any specialized agency. The same applied in respect of economic and social matters despite the fact that there were numerous specialized agencies in those fields. The intellectual and cultural delinquency of the Council had resulted in the situation that although the third Committee of the Assembly was called the « Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee», the cultural burden of the Committee had been practically negligible.
But the basic actual disability of the Economic and Social Council was the prevailing distrust and disagreement between the great Powers. That political and moral disharmony, not to say antagonism, vitiated and almost nullified every good endeavour. The Economic and Social Council was meant to function in an altogether different atmosphere.
The basic theoretical disability of the Council lay in the limitations imposed upon it by the Charter. The Council was only empowered to study, discuss, report and recommend; it had no executive or directive powers. The fact must therefore be faced that the Economic and Social Council shared with the General Assembly both its strength and its weakness, its strength in that there was no veto, and its weakness in that no executive power was vested in it.
Turning to possible means of overcoming some of the difficulties of the Economic and Social Council, Mr. Malik spoke first of matters of procedure. The Committee on Procedure would certainly improve the rules of procedure, but no magical results could be expected of even the most perfect rules. Where the stakes were high, sovereign nations in a council of nations would always use procedure as a sort of fending device. Patience, realism, understanding and, above all, absolute fairness, were the only antidotes against the possible abuse of procedure.
The Council must take some radical action in regard to its increasingly unmanageable agenda. He thought the time would soon come when the Council would have to be in continuous session for at least the first six months of the year. There were also a number of practical rules to which the Council might have to resort in the matter of dividing its business as between plenary and committee meetings. Everything must be done to make available to the Council the creative leisureliness and peace which were now completely denied it.
It was an illusion to suppose that, in a council of nations, propaganda speeches could ever be suppressed. They could only be overcome by lifting the quality of debate to a higher plane. Those who complained of propaganda speeches should themselves introduce ideological themes of such a profound character that all attempts at propaganda would appear miserably crude. Ideological superficiality could only be exposed and cancelled by ideological depth, and nothing could cause propaganda to disappear more quickly than a reasoned, profound utterance of one’s deepest convictions. If there was propaganda, it was only because there was, on the other hand, ideological impotence. The tragedy of the world at the present time was that there was no attempt to give to the traditions which embodied the deepest truth clear, sufficient and responsible expression.
The proper balance between political responsibility and theoretical accomplishment had not yet been adequately attained in the representation on the Council. By theoretical accomplishment Mr. Malik did not mean technical knowledge but rather ability to formulate universal, generic ideals. Since the Council was a council of sovereign States, it was clear that the political element must always dominate its representation. There should be no inversion of that natural order, but the proper balance between the political and the theoretical should be achieved. By its very conception the Council was not meant to include only politicians and technical experts; the voice of the scientist, the scholar, the thinker, the poet, must also be heard.
To make up for its cultural delinquency, the Council must reconsider its relationship both to UNESCO and to the Department of Public Information of the Secretariat. Just as it was possible for the Council to take the initiative in economic and social development and to maintain that initiative while closely collaborating with the specialized agencies concerned, so it ought to be possible for the Council to have an intellectual and spiritual vision for some of the less fortunate, areas of the world and to stimulate UNESCO to realize that vision.
The Council had, moreover, never put into practice the first part of Article 65 of the Charter, which read: « The Economic and Social Council may furnish information to the Security Council and shall assist the Security Council upon its request».
If the Economic and Social Council had volunteered to furnish significant information to the Security Council in connexion with Kashmir, Indonesia or Palestine, the Security Council would certainly have been materially aided in its difficult task. It seemed to be the intention of the Charter that the Council should be alive to any possible contribution it might make to peace and security, in respect of any problem of which the Security Council was seized.
As the Council was the only existing institution to which the exceedingly important specialized agencies were centrally related, nothing was more important than the Council’s responsibilities in the field of co-ordination. The agencies themselves were rightly conservative and jealous of their autonomy. But the present world situation was so desperate that unless their work could be creatively co-ordinated under the Council, they would waste their substance in impotence, friction and unnecessary duplication. It was absolutely essential for the United Nations completely to win the confidence of the specialized agencies, to bring them creatively together, to stimulate their growth and co-operation and to make their central relationship to the United Nations a living, challenging fact.
The Secretariat had produced very valuable reports and surveys in the economic field. The Council must stimulate the production of similar reports in the social and cultural fields. The Yearbook on Human Rights was an excellent beginning, but that whole virgin field had as yet barely been touched. If the social experts could stimulate sociologists to make authentic, penetrating analyses of social conditions throughout the world, or a dozen thinkers to work out, each from his own point of view, the cultural and spiritual needs and challenges of the present moment, they would certainly have achieved their purpose.
The Council had to its credit a series of important recommendations in the fields of economic and social co-operation and of human rights, all of which had not been implemented. The difficulty therefore was not with the Council, which had shown real sensitivity to many a delicate situation and had made constructive recommendations thereon; the real difficulty was with the sovereign Governments which had failed to implement social and economic recommendations made by the Council or by the General Assembly. The criticism on that point should not apply to the Council alone, but to the United Nations as a whole. There was not enough faith in the United Nations, there was not enough esprit de corps to make the recommendations of the General Assembly or of the Council sufficiently compelling. If the United Nations had sufficient moral authority to bring about the fulfilment of half the resolutions already passed by the Council, the faithfulness of the Council to its duties under the Charter would become perfectly clear.
The Economic and Social Council, which was the United Nations machinery for economic and social co-operation, should be more fully used, and more creative projects should be entrusted to it. If significant schemes of international co-operation were always carried on outside the United Nations, the United Nations machinery could never be tested and strengthened. It was right that the wonderful work of UNRRA in respect of children, relief and refugees should be taken over, but if the usefulness of the Council were restricted to such privative activity only, it would sooner or later doom itself to complete sterility. Bold, positive projects of international economic and social co-operation under the United Nations were needed with the assistance of the specialized agencies concerned. Unless such responsible projects were entrusted to the Council, the promotion of solutions of international economic and social problems by the United Nations, as envisaged in Article 55, would always remain a pleasant dream.
But such a positive utilization of the Council was obviously dependent upon the world political situation and the Charter itself. The Council was not trusted because there was no trust and no peace. Thus the economic and social must ultimately wait upon the political. But even if the political situation should improve, the Council would still be limited by the Charter. There was no world government; there was only a council of sovereign nations. Unless the Charter were revised with a view to granting the Council real executive power and the necessary authority and funds required by such power, international economic and social co-operation under the United Nations would remain essentially limited. Thus, on account of both the world political situation and the Charter itself, the Council had reached the end of its possibilities.
With that critical and constructive appraisal in mind, Mr. Malik proposed to introduce in committee a resolution dealing with the following points:
1. Authority and encouragement to the Council to make whatever arrangements it deemed necessary, including longer sessions, in order to deal adequately with its business and to regulate its agenda.
2. Recommendation to make surveys and studies in the social and cultural fields comparable in conception and scope to those successfully initiated in the economic field.
3. Recommendation to extend the activities of the Council in the cultural field in relation to the activities of UNESCO and the United Nations Department of Public Information.
4. Financial provision to support its activities, including the above extensions.
5. Recommendation to the Security Council and to the Economic and Social Council to consider and, in appropriate cases, consult together, regarding the application of Article 65 of the Charter.
Turning to what he considered to be the two most significant developments of the activity of the Economic and Social Council, Mr. Malik first stressed the importance of the regional commissions. The account of the work of the Economic Commission for Europe in the report of the Council revealed the stature already attained by that Commission as well as the concrete possibilities that loomed before it. In a score of practical ways it was helping in the economic recovery of Europe and in facilitating economic exchange and co-operation between the eastern and western parts of the continent. The counsels of the Economic Commission for Europe had at various times led to an allocation of coal that had resulted in an expansion of metallurgical or timber production, and in the second quarter of 1948 its recommendation had been a factor in bringing about an increase of 400,000 tons in European steel production.
Again, its help in promoting the international exchange of railway wagons and the restoration of the freedom of the road had materially contributed to the recovery of European trade and production. Only the day before, the newspapers had told of the success of the Commission’s efforts, in collaboration with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Food and Agriculture Organization, to conclude a multilateral trade agreement on timber between the eastern and western countries of Europe. The volume A Survey of the Economic Situation and Prospects of Europe (ECE/58/Rev. 1), published by the Commission in April 1948, and the latest report of the Commission to the Council (E/791), were among the finest documents ever published by the United Nations. In the present depressing moment in the relations between East and West, the Economic and Social Council had kept alive a flicker of positive cooperation which could, if properly tended, develop into a mighty flame.
The Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East had held three sessions since its establishment fifteen months previously. Under its direction, a volume entitled Economic Survey of Asia and the Far East (1947) had been published by the Secretariat. Moreover, an important step in the direction of grappling with practical problems had been taken by the establishment of a Bureau of Flood Control for Asia and the Far East, which had been recently authorized by the Council. There were long-term plans, for annual surveys, for close co-operation with the specialized agencies, especially with the FAO in dealing with the food problem, for increasing the number of trained technicians and administrators, for the development of agriculture and industry, and for the rehabilitation and expansion of the transport system throughout that vast region.
Youngest of the regional commissions was the Economic Commission for Latin America, in its session in Santiago de Chile, in June 1948, it had considered both its organizational and its substantive problems. Seeking to attack its substantive problems with the co-ordinated assistance of the specialized agencies, it was moving cautiously and experimentally into such areas as agricultural prices, credit and capital investment, manpower and immigration, and the working out of a comprehensive economic survey of the entire region.
The Middle East was one of the major underdeveloped areas of the world. It had untold natural resources; it occupied a unique strategic position; its peoples could rise to the highest attainments of culture and feeling, as they had repeatedly proved in their long and checkered history. The highest values in civilization owed an incalculable debt to the Middle East. It was not too much, therefore, if the United Nations should, in all sincerity and justice, help the peoples of the Middle East to develop their possibilities. There was great tribulation in the Middle East at present but constructive and farsighted statesmanship would never allow such tribulation to stand in the way of economic, social and cultural development. In fact that great tribulation had arisen because the development had not taken place. Once that development took place, the unnatural and much exploited difficulties of the present moment would take care of themselves. If the proposed Economic Commission for the Middle East were established — and he thought that should be done immediately — and if its growth were wisely conceived and conducted, it might prove to be a far better agency for peace than many a decision by the Security Council or by the General Assembly.
The growth of regional economic commissions raised fundamental problems for international co-operation and for the structure and responsibilities of the United Nations. The development of economic regionalism had been feared, in certain quarters, as possibly leading to economic regional autarchy, and therefore interfering with the free movement of trade. The chief argument that ought to dispel that fear was that a development was taking place inside and not outside the United Nations. While fully concentrating on a particular region, a regional commission could and should be properly integrated into the total pattern of world economy.
It was fully within the power of the Economic and Social Council to modulate, restrain and co-ordinate the activities of its subsidiary regional bodies.
It was clear that the economic and social welfare of the Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories was the sovereign responsibility of certain Members of the United Nations. But within the United Nations itself there were more and there were less economically and socially developed Members. It might be asked who was responsible for the development of the less-developed countries which were Members of the United Nations. That question obviously concerned considerably more than half the membership of the Organization. It was all very well to speak in that connexion of independence and of sovereign equality; it was all very well to say that each Member State would look after its own interests. But what if some could not do so? What if they required external assistance and advice? Hitherto such assistance had come as a result of bilateral arrangements with the more-developed countries, and doubtless that method would always be available. The question should nevertheless be raised as to whether the United Nations as such had not some responsibility towards the less-developed among its own Members? Should those Members, already sufficiently unfortunate either by reason of their remoteness from the centre of things or by reason of their strategic position, be perpetually left at the mercy of their own impotence or — what was equally disabling — of the ruthless rivalry of the great Powers?
Mr. Malik believed that the United Nations must assume basic responsibility for the welfare of its Members. Association with the United Nations must mean something positive, and not only in the field of security. In economic and social matters that association should not be only an honorary title. Economic and social advancement was of the very essence of the Charter. Consequently, the United Nations, and especially the more fortunate of its Members, must feel creatively concerned for the material and spiritual welfare of their less fortunate fellow- members. Otherwise the present anomaly would continue, namely, that certain Non-Self-Governing Territories would be better looked after economically and socially than certain Members of the United Nations, and membership in the Organization would, so far as the less-developed nations were concerned, cease to have the high premium that ought to be placed upon it.
The Economic and Social Council would miss its greatest opportunities if it became only a forum where national policies met and clashed, or a passive recipient of proposals separately and diversely conceived. The Economic and Social Council should be an original, creative and effective agency, launching bold and responsible schemes of development. It was in that respect in particular that the regional Commissions would seem to have to assume a great responsibility. Concentrating on a specific region, fixing their aims on two or three fundamental problems, drawing their zest from the community of interests and culture permeating their area, and bringing to bear upon their task the collective wisdom of the world Organization, the regional Commissions were the natural collective instruments whereby the United Nations could effectively discharge its obligations under the Charter, with, naturally, the full co-operation of the specialized agencies. It was true then that the unity of the United Nations, in so far as it existed, could make itself felt in a practical way by bringing about the wholesome, collective, unbiased development of large regions of the globe which would otherwise remain a pitiable prey to their own impotence or to the unchecked influence of some mighty Power.
The problem of human rights was another matter which deserved special consideration. The Economic and Social Council was transmitting to the General Assembly three types of documents in that field: a draft declaration of human rights, three draft conventions concerning freedom of information (E/Conf. 6/79) and a draft convention on genocide. All three documents were of the utmost importance, but Mr. Malik would draw particular attention to the declaration on human rights.
The problem of human rights certainly lay at the heart of the compact made by Members of the Organization. The previous war had been fought in part because fundamental human rights had been contemptuously trampled on by Nazi Germany. That particular cause of the war had been given classical expression in the four freedoms enunciated by the late President Roosevelt. To forget that cause of the war would be tragic, for then indeed the war itself would have been fought in vain. The United Nations was itself the outcome of a war the whole moral planning of which was imbued with the issue of human rights.
Human rights were mentioned seven times in She Charter. The first few lines of the Preamble read: « We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small... »
Thus, the determination concerning human rights came second only to the determination concerning peace and war.
The Charter went even further than that, for, in Article 55, peace and war themselves were made functions of human rights. Furthermore, apart from the five principal organs of the United Nations and the Military Staff Committee, the Commission on Human Rights was the only other organ mentioned by name in the Charter. That Commission, therefore, enjoyed a unique statutory position. The Charter not only spoke in such vague terms as «promotion» and «encouragement» of human rights; it laid equal emphasis on their actual «observance». It was thus impossible for the United Nations to disown its origins; it was impossible for other issues, no matter how urgent and important, to displace the question of human rights from the centre of vision.
But it was patent that the Charter in that respect was incomplete. Nowhere did it define human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Charter reaffirmed faith in fundamental human rights; it pledged Members to promote and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It further spoke of «assisting in the realization» and «promoting the observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms». But what were those rights and freedoms? On that crucial question the Charter was completely silent.
The Economic and Social Council had been quick to perceive that lacuna in the Charter and to set about filling it. It had instructed its Commission on Human Rights to proceed at once to the elaboration of an international bill of rights which would give content and meaning to that pregnant phrase of the Preamble, «the dignity and worth of the human person». Under the inspiring leadership of Mrs. Roosevelt, who had brought to the task dignity, authority, understanding and an unusual breadth of sympathy, the Commission had laboured for two years on its assignment.
The first fruit of its labours had been the draft declaration of human rights, now before the General Assembly, which he considered one of the most important fundamental texts thus far put out by the United Nations. After it had been reviewed and adopted by the General Assembly — which the Lebanese delegation thought should be done at the present session — it would not be an ordinary resolution like any other resolution; it would fill the void unavoidably left by the framers of the basic law of the United Nations. It would complete the Charter itself by defining what had been intentionally left undefined in it, and, thus, the ordinary citizen throughout the world would be able to say, «Now the ambiguity is removed; this is what my Government at San Francisco pledged itself to have faith in and to promote, encourage, respect, observe and realize.» Decision on the declaration of human rights would entail decision on some of the deepest issues of the present day.
There was first the proper dialectic between right and duty. The question arose whether man had only rights and no duties, or whether his freedom was precisely for the sake of certain essential duties which he ought to perform. There was next the question of material economic rights and of how far economic rights extended without upsetting other values. Thirdly, there was the question of man’s relationship to society, of whether he was socially determined or whether he could criticize and rebel and refuse to conform. Fourthly, there was the question of relationship to the State. Was the State an original, uncreated, unanswerable absolute so that, in the determination of an individual’s rights and freedoms, he was wholly its creature, or was it answerable to something higher than itself? Fifthly, there was the question of the intermediate institutions between the State and the individual, institutions like the trade unions, the home, the church, the university and the intimate circle of friends. Did those intermediate institutions possess a certain autonomy of their own and were they totally overwhelmed by the determinations of the State? Could an individual ever be free if he belonged to a society where the intermediate grounds of freedom were not themselves free? Then there was the question of the order and structure of man’s rights. Had they all equal validity and equal importance, or was there an order of depth and hierarchy?
Finally, there was the question of the nature and the origin of those rights. Were they conferred upon an individual by an external visible power such as the State — or now by the United Nations — so that what was now granted might some day conceivably be withdrawn, or were they part of the essence of man, so that if they were violated in any way, he ceased to be a human being at all? If they belonged to the essence of man, should they not also be grounded in a Supreme Being who, as the lord of history, could guarantee their meaning and their stability?
It was those final issues which would be explicitly or implicitly decided in the Assembly’s treatment of the draft declaration of human rights. There was no happier augury for the decision than the fact that it would take place in Paris, the matchless city of light and freedom. The topics to be examined by the First Committee were full of excitement, but such excitement came and went. What would abide was the final issue of principle in the present world situation. All realized by now that the ultimate issues of the present were ideological, and it must therefore be clear that even the political excitement of the First Committee derived its pathos and significance from the underlying ideological conflict.
Superficial people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had ridiculed the classical ages of faith. They were now paying the price of their faithless superficiality by living in the middle of the twentieth century in one of the most fearful ages of faith the world had ever known. Faith had thus come back on man with a vengeance; the vengeance of the dark and primitive. For it was dangerous to neglect the mind and spirit of man; it was dangerous to poke fun at the logos. The neglected logos would always avenge itself by perverting both itself and the world.
The most important issue in the order of truth at the present time was what constituted the proper worth and dignity of man. That would be the central theme in the debate on the declaration of human rights. Unless that issue were rightly settled, there would be no meaning to any other settlement. Korea, Germany, Palestine and atomic energy could not be settled if that central issue were left unsettled, for a peace and a settlement in which man were left ambiguous, estranged from himself and from the truth, would be meaningless.