At the beginning of the 1960's an unsophisticated observer—meaning, of course, someone other than the reader—might have concluded that, in the United States at least, the long-standing controversy over multilateral versus bilateral aid had been laid to rest. The funeral oration had been pronounced by no less a personage than President Eisenhower when he addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 1960. He went right down the line for multilateral assistance via UN channels.

The arms control and disarmament issues on which there is no agreement are numerous and important. The purpose of this article is not to go over what is by now too familiar ground, but rather to examine the little considered question of the relationship contemplated between the United Nations and agencies that may be created to administer arms control or disarmament arrangements.

One of the perennial questions before the General Assembly and its Fifth Committee is that of the geographical distribution of the staff of the Secretariat. With the admission of sixteen new African members in 1960 and the sudden interest of the Soviet Union in filling its “quota,” the question took on special interest and urgency in the fifteenth and sixteenth sessions. The Committee of Experts, set up by the General Assembly in 1959 to review the organization and activities of the Secretariat, was asked to consider and make recommendations on certain aspects of the problem. The Fifth Committee spent much of its time during the sixteenth session in discussing the matter, and ended by inviting the Secretary-General to take into account the two draft resolutions introduced and views expressed in the Committee on the question, and to present to the General Assembly at its seventeenth session “a statement of his considered views on how to improve the geographical distribution of the staff of the Secretariat.” The question is, therefore, one which directly and immediately concerns the present position and future development of the Secretariat.

In the sixteen years since the United Nations on the invitation of the United States established its principal headquarters in New York, there have been remarkably few incidents and little publicity in connection with the immunities and privileges of Members' representatives. This is no doubt due not to the clarity or quality of the relevant juridical instruments but to the tact and understanding of all concerned: the United Nations and more particularly its Secretaries-General, the representatives of the Member States and in a very large measure the Department of State and the United States Mission to the United Nations. It was the violent reaction of Chairman N. S. Khrushchev, attending the fifteenth session of the General Assembly as head of the Soviet Union delegation, against the restrictions imposed upon his movements in the United States by the Department of State which drew attention to the question of the rights and privileges of delegations to the United Nations. For the first time the head of the delegation of a great power and a permanent member of the Security Council was subjected to such restrictions. Speaking in the General Assembly, Mr. Khrushchev referred to “the various restrictions of the rights of representatives of States in the United Nations” and the “instances … of the representatives of young African and Asian States being subjected to racial discrimination.” He raised the question “whether or not thought should be given to the choice of another location for the United Nations Headquarters which would better facilitate the effective work of this international organization.”The nature and extent of these restrictions will be discussed below but it may be well to begin with a survey and analysis of the bewildering array of instruments which govern this matter.

The United Nations has patendy not fulfilled the high hopes which some of its sponsors had for it. A major share of responsibility for this failure has commonly been assigned to the Soviet Union, and not widiout reason. Yet the Soviet view and Soviet conduct have not been products of perversity or malice. They follow logically, first, from the world view held by the communist leadership, which sees the United Nations as another arena in the struggle between the two “world systems” of our age, and, second, from the Soviet experience as a minority power seeking to frustrate the efforts of the hostile majority “in control” of the UN.

For the purposes of this discussion, the political role of the Secretary General is defined in somewhat narrow terms. It is not intended to discuss his role in the development of policy generally, which would be a possible way of viewing the subject. Rather, attention will be given to the role of the Secretary-General in the discharge of one of the major responsibilities of the United Nations—the maintenance of international peace and security. Consequently, the role of the Secretary-General in developing and executing policies and programs of economic and social development, which has come to be one of the major fields of activity of the Organization, will not be touched upon, except incidentally.

The African scramble for independence has led to two major political trends which have at least the superficial look of being contradictory but which may still turn out to be complementary. One is the consolidation of states, and, it may be, of nations, within the frontiers traced on the map of Africa with an imperial flourish by the colonial powers. The other is the unceasing agitation and conferring to secure some sort of African unity which would bring together within a common framework either all the African peoples or such more limited groupings of them as are now prepared to join forces for general or particular purposes. The unanswered, and still unanswerable, question is whether the states which have been emerging in such quantities, with more still to come—29 African Members of the UN at the end of 1961 as against five in 1955—will serve as the building blocks for a greater African union or whether they will jealously guard the separate identity which they have now achieved.

When Africa emerged with unexpected haste as an independent political force in the world, the Commonwealth was still adjusting itself to revolutionary transformations in Asia. There was no doubt that it had entered on a new phase, but the phase was hard to define. Because the nature of the Commonwealth is implicit, there is always considerable diversity of view on its significance even among its own citizens. There is always a time lag as well. Many people, particularly in the “Old Commonwealth,” had just begun to grasp the significance of “The Commonwealth,” no longer “The British Commonwealth,” no longer a blood relationship; and now they had to cope with its rapid expansion and the imminent prospect that white members would be in a minority. Neither citizens nor foreigners had even made up their minds whether they were viewing the decline and fall of the British Empire or the finest hour of the Commonwealth. The doctrine that the new multiracial Commonwealth was the blessed culmination of the virtues of the Empire, the triumph of its good instincts over its errors, had certainly become the official view celebrated in speeches and communiqués, but public opinion lagged behind—not so much resistant to the new idea as captive of traditional attitudes. Not only the white people's view was anachronistic; Asians and Africans were themselves slow to recognize and accept their new position of equality and of responsibility.

Colonialism, at least as it is generally defined in the United Nations as Western rule of non-metropolitan areas, is rapidly being brought to a close. As a consequence, within a few years some of the activities of the United Nations will be reduced to almost insignificant proportions. Seven of the eleven territories that were once included within the trusteeship system have already achieved self-government or independence, and another, Ruanda-Urundi, will soon attain that goal. Unless new territories are added, only Nauru, New Guinea, and the Pacific Islands will remain under trusteeship. The list of territories which according to the General Assembly are subject to the provisions of Chapter XI of the Charter has not been cut as drastically, but in terms of the number of people involved, the reduction is equally impressive. Even with the high rate of population growth and the addition of the Spanish and Portuguese dependencies, the number of people living in such areas is about one-fifth of the 1946 figure of 215,000,000. With a few important exceptions such as Kenya, Uganda, Nyasaland and the Rhodesias, and Angola and Mozambique, the territories which in the UN's view “have not yet attained a full measure of self-government” are small and have populations of less than one million. It has already been recommended that the future of the Department of Trusteeship and Information from Non-Self-Governing Territories and the possibility of allocating its duties to other departments be reviewed in the light of these developments.

The sixteenth session of the General Assembly on December 19, 1961, adopted two complementary resolutions, one on the “Decentralization of the Economic and Social Activities of the United Nations and Strengthening of the Regional Economic Commissions” and the other on “Planning for Economic Development.” The latter, inter alia, recommended the establishment of regional development and planning institutes “closely linked to the respective regional economic commissions.” As in many national administrations, the forces for centralization and for decentralization of the administration of the United Nations programs in the economic and social fields will no doubt continue to operate in the years to come. But the adoption of the resolutions referred to above tips the scale in favor of decentralization. It means recognition of the ascendancy of forces which have become increasingly apparent in the world organization, particularly since the recent strides towards universality of membership.

At the beginning of the seventeenth session of the General Assembly, there were thirteen Commonwealth countries at the United Nations, constituting one-eighth of the total membership. Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago (which both became independent during August 1962) and Uganda (which received its independence in October) became Members of the UN during the seventeenth session. Kenya and British Guiana are two other Commonwealth countries approaching independence. If there are no other new United Nations Members in the meantime, and if these five remain in the Commonwealth, as they are expected to do, their addition would mean that one-sixth of the Members of the UN were also Commonwealth members.

Ever since World War II the United Kingdom has been engaged in the process of withdrawal from the Caribbean—indeed the beginnings were made before the war ended. The clearest and most recent evidence has been the advance of Jamaica and Trinidad from colonial status to independent membership in the British Commonwealth and the United Nations. But this was not quite what had been intended. The aim originally had been to make one federal union of all the British colonies in the region. The attempt, however, failed. British Guiana and British Honduras withdrew from the scheme at an early stage, and the federation of the islands foundered after a four-year period of trial.

No consideration of the place of Africa in the United Nations or of the role of international organization in the progress of this continent would be thinkable without an authoritative expression of views upon the subject by Africans themselves.

Listed below is the membership of UN bodies for 1961. Unless otherwise noted, membership expires on December 31 of the year indicated.

In one of his first declarations as Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld said that no part of his task was “more challenging than the one which consists in trying to develop all the potentialities of that unique diplomatic instrument which the Charter has created in the institution called the Secretary-General of the U.N.”

The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, was opened for signature on March 30, 1961. As of August 1, 1961 (the last day for such action), this treaty was signed by 64 countries and as of the date of writing this article eleven states had become parties by ratification or accession: Cameroun, Canada, Cuba, Dahomey, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Morocco, Syria, and Thailand. When the United Nations Conference for the Adoption of a Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, meeting at United Nations Headquarters from January 24 to March 25, 1961, adopted the new Convention on March 25, 1961, it completed a work which had occupied international organs since 1948. It was in this year that, at its third session, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs adopted a resolution, introduced by the representative of the United States, which recommended the draft finally adopted by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) as Resolution 159 II D (VII), August 3, 1948. In this resolution the Secretary-General of the United Nations was requested to begin work on the drafting of a new single convention on narcotic drugs. He was instructed that the new treaty should replace the existing treaties in the field, provide for control of the cultivation of plants grown for the production of narcotic drugs, and simplify the international control machinery by replacing the present Permanent Central Opium Board and Drug Supervisory Body by a single organ.

The first part of the sixteenth session of the General Assembly met at UN Headquarters from September 19 through December 20, 1961, when it was adjourned. The second part of the session was to begin on January 15, 1962. At the opening plenary meeting a moment of silence was observed as a tribute to the memory of the late Secretary-General and of the devoted officers of the UN who died with him. At the 1046th meeting, upon recommendation of the Security Council, the Assembly appointed U Thant as acting Secretary-General for a term of office ending on April 10, 1963.

Report to the General Assembly: The fifth report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the UN General Assembly covered the period from July 1, 1960, to June 30, 1961. The report stated that most of the Agency's programs were now firmly established and that the Agency had reached the stage where it was capable of further developing certain of its operations. The direction and scope of such development would be determined largely by the rate of advance of nuclear technology, by the extent to which the Agency might be able to serve as a means for promoting scientific cooperation between the leading nuclear powers, and by the support which it received from its members. Events of interest in the Agency's work in the last year included the completion of studies of nuclear power prospects in Finland and the Philippines, technical conferences on the economics and technology of small and medium power reactors, and conferences on nuclear ships. The Agency was able to report reasonable progress in promoting the uses of radioisotopes and radiation under safe conditions in the less developed areas. Progress had also been made in giving help or guidance to member states on questions of safety and pretection against radiation hazards. The Agency had paid special attention to establishing standards of basic radiological safety, safety of reactors, and standards for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste. Under the scientific and technical information program, the Agency had held thirteen meetings in the period under review. In 1960 the Agency had made available an estimated $2,560,000 for technical assistance in the form of equipment, experts, and fellowships.

It is possible to distinguish roughly two periods in the history of the United Nations. During the first, which lasted until the middle nineteen fifties, the Western powers had a fairly secure majority in the General Assembly, and Cold War issues tended to dominate. The supreme test of that first phase was the Korean War. It showed both that the new International Organization refused to practice appeasement and that in a bipolar world whose main antagonists were engaged in an ideological struggle and endowed with nuclear weapons, UN intervention in the conflicts between the blocs would either expose the Organization to a demonstration of impotence or submit the world to the risks of escalation. A second phase began when membership of the UN increased, and the newly-independent nations became the biggest group within the Assembly. Now, as Dag Hammarskjöld put it in his report to the fifteenth General Assembly, the main task in the area of peace and security shifted to “preventive diplomacy”—rushing to the scene of fires which break out “outside the sphere of bloc differences” before the arrival of the major contenders. The biggest challenge has been the Congo crisis. It has tested all the assumptions which had been made—by scholars as well as by the late Secretary-General—about the role of the UN, its possibilities and its limits, and about the relations between its principal organs and its main groups of members.