The League's goals included disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation diplomacy and improving global welfare. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from the preceding hundred years.
The League lacked an armed force of its own and so depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to economic sanctions which the League ordered, or provide an Army, when needed, for the League to use. VAT reg no Main menu. Subjects Shop Courses Live Jobs board. View shopping cart. View mytutor2u. Account Shopping cart Logout. Explore History History Search. Explore Blog Reference library Collections Shop. Share: Facebook Twitter Email Print page.
Under the United Nations, the work of the Mandates Commission continued through the Trusteeship Council, though it was no longer composed of non-governmental representatives.
However, as the previously mandated countries have become officially recognized as sovereign and independent States, its responsibilities have steadily diminished. After the war, the new Eastern European States of Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia were forced to sign agreements granting religious, social and political equality to their minorities, whether or not they had been defeated.
In order to supervise these agreements, the League of Nations set up the Minority Section, whose influential programmes were rather unique at that time. Between and , petitions were submitted to the Minorities Section. Due to the efforts of Erik Colban, the first director of the Minority Section, a more personal approach was developed.
The Section officials would investigate matters locally and pursue their findings. This close cooperation between the Section and the accused States made it possible in many cases to avoid further aggravation and alleviate future problems. Even before the onset of the First World War, the necessity of instituting a unified communications and transit organization had already been established.
Thus, the need for such an organization was reinforced in the Covenant, though with the provision that all the major organizations involved would maintain their own constitutions and thus a certain degree of autonomy. However, this was only fully implemented in the case of the Communications and Transit Organization, which consisted of the following: a General Conference, made up of representatives of all League of Nations Members; a Committee of 18 States, 14 of whom were elected by the Conference though not necessarily from Members of the League of Nations and four of whom were Permanent Members of the Council; and a Transit Section in the Secretariat, directed by Robert Haas of France.
A number of subcommittees were set up to deal with such matters as rail transport, inland navigation, ports and maritime navigation, road traffic and power transmission. The purpose of the Lisbon Conference was to reach agreements on the unification of maritime signals; in , a Convention on the Unification of Road Signals was drawn up.
Other agreements concerned the simplification of passport and visa procedures, the regulation of the passage of commercial and touring motorcars, international road traffic and the transmission of electric power across national frontiers.
In addition, the organization provided practical expert advice to individual States such as China, and worked on reforming the calendar. In and , several agreements intended to protect the rights of women and children were put in place by a number of States. As a result, Article 23 of the Covenant entrusted the League of Nations with supervising the execution of these agreements, and in , an International Conference held in Geneva drew up a Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children that was ratified by 48 States.
The Assembly launched two extensive enquiries in order to assemble data for the campaign against such traffic in both the East and the West. Several committees succeeded in discussing and improving some conditions. For example, in a number of countries, the age of marriage and consent was legally raised and licensed brothels were abolished. The rights of illegitimate children were also discussed. In addition, 50 countries accepted the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child , which dealt with issues such as the placement of children in families, the support of blind children, and the effects of economic depression and unemployment on children and young people.
In , the Assembly established an Information Centre for questions regarding child welfare. The Centre collected and classified as much information as possible on this subject. After , the committees dealt with post-war societal problems. Established in Paris in , the International Health Office collected and distributed information from various health departments around the world, though it had no authority to act on its own.
However, these bodies were not associated with the Paris International Health Office because of disagreements that existed primarily between the United States of America and some Member States. Under the leadership of Dr.
In addition to its information service, the Health Section acted as a link between national health administrations in many ways. For example, it extended its support to governments through the promotion of technical assistance, and it advised the Assembly and the Health Council on all international public health questions.
For these reasons it is considered one of the most successful auxiliary organizations of the League of Nations. As a result of the Warsaw Health Conference, plans were set up to control the spread of epidemic diseases in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean countries, the Far East, and the Soviet Union. Through these institutions, several vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus and tuberculosis for example were standardized worldwide.
The first global attempt to control the traffic in opium and other deadly habit-forming drugs such as morphine, heroin and cocaine occurred via The Hague Convention, signed by 42 nations in The signatory States agreed to allow only such drugs coming into their countries which were considered necessary for medicinal and scientific purposes. However, before this Convention could be implemented, the First World War broke out.
After the war, the League of Nations was entrusted with reactivating The Hague Convention of , and an Opium Advisory Committee was appointed by the Council with the task of convincing States to re-adhere to its edicts.
However, it became evident that in order to prevent the illicit smuggling of drugs, drug manufacture and production had to be controlled at the source. Thus, in and , the League of Nations organized two Opium Conferences to deal with this issue.
The Convention of the First Conference strengthened the original Convention of ; the second Conference added practical control measures to be implemented regarding the production and manufacture of narcotic substances. Responsibility was transferred to the United Nations, whose Advisory Committee continues to deal with this issue through its Commission on Narcotic Drugs. The League of Nations was concerned not only with the exchange of political ideals and material goods, but also with the study of strategies that could reinforce intellectual relations between States.
Its purpose was to improve the working conditions of the educated workforce and to build up international relations between teachers, artists, scientists and members of other intellectual professions; national committees were to support their efforts.
The ICC submitted a modest proposal of its plans in the early s, but the Assembly refused to supply it with a budget that would allow it to remain in Geneva. Its first director, M. Bergson, was followed by Henri Bonnet in By , more than 40 such organizations acted as links between the IIIC and the various scientific and cultural institutions around the world; their proposals and opinions were exchanged in a number of conferences.
In April of , there were approximately , prisoners of war primarily in Russia awaiting repatriation under miserable conditions. The Council of the League of Nations appointed Fridtjof Nansen, the famous Norwegian explorer and statesman, to investigate the situation and report back with his findings.
Nansen, however, took initiative and organized the repatriation of the prisoners on his own. In less than two years, and despite a very limited budget, he and his assistants succeeded in sending home more than , prisoners of war from 26 countries at an average cost of only one pound sterling each.
At the same time, a similarly grave situation was arising. As a result of the Revolution, there were more than 1. These refugees had neither the right to claim any nationality nor the financial means to improve their situation. In , the League of Nations set up a Refugee Organization in order to deal with this problem, and Nansen was offered the post of High Commissioner, which he accepted. After the situation of the Russian refugees had been settled, Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek refugees from Turkey were requesting help from the League of Nations.
In order to reach a common policy and to stimulate the process of repatriation, Nansen convened a number of conferences. However, with the exception of the recognition of the Nansen Passport, which gave the refugees legal protection and was recognized by more than 50 States, the outcomes were small. Fridtjof Nansen served as the League of Nations first High Commissioner for Refugees from , helping hundreds of thousands of refugees to return home.
His efforts enabled many others to become legal residents and find work in the countries where they had found refuge. Nansen saw that one of the biggest problems facing refugees was the lack of internationally recognised identification papers. When famine broke out in Russia in , Nansen organised a relief programme for millions of its victims.
For his crucial work, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in The Office remained active throughout the war years, after which it became the International Refugee Organization, set up by the United Nations in Established in , the The UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award celebrates the legacy of Fridtjof Nansen by honouring individuals, groups and organizations who go above and beyond the call of duty to protect refugees, displaced and stateless people.
Although the League was not able to avoid the outbreak of World War Two , there were notable achievements and successes in the field of international technical cooperation. Powerful States such as Germany, Italy, and Japan left the organization, and by the time the Second World War broke out in , many had abandoned the League of Nations and its unfulfilled promise of collective security, and had instead returned to the traditional system of defensive alliances and power blocs.
At the end of the war, 43 States were still Members of the League of Nations, though for all intents and purposes it had ceased to exist. However, the formal termination of the organization was necessary. At the initiative of the British Foreign Office, the last Assembly the twenty-first was held in Geneva on 8 April Thus, having handed over all of its assets to the United Nations, and having granted the new Secretariat full control of its Library and archives, the 43 Members attending this last Assembly declared by unanimous vote that as of 20 April , the League of Nations would cease to exist.
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