716 



ment is the absence of public record of their proceedings. Under these 

 circumstances, a non-political organization can very rapidly become 

 a political one. The outspoken Dr. Evang of Norway, an international 

 health expert, made explicit his criticism of this development, before 

 the Ciba Foundation Symposium on the Health of Mankind in 1967 : 



Generally speaking, formation of political blocs of coun- 

 tries operating as such within WHO is not conductive to 

 international health work, regardless of whether such a bloc 

 is composed of developing African countries or of highlj 

 developed western countries. A number of the richest coun- 

 tries in the world have set a bad example by forming in 

 Geneva a permanent committee which discusses the problems 

 of international health at a non-technical and political level 

 before the same problems reach the proper bodies of WHO.''^ 



Nevertheless, the "Geneva group" arrangement would appear to be 

 a realistic way of accommodating to the One-Member, One- Vote situa- 

 tion in the World Health Assembly; if not the only alternative, it is 

 at least an available expedient in current use. 



The i^olitical aspects of this situation, so far as the United States 

 is concerned, pervade the entire UN system. The World Health Orga- 

 nization simply shares this defect because it is a part of that system. 

 In an interim report of a Special Presidential Commission, Chairman 

 Henry Cabot Lodge described this elementary and fundamental 

 situation as: "The disparity between voting power and financial 

 responsibility." ^^ 



Although financial responsibility was built into the UN and WHO 

 from the beginning, the loss of relative voting power was not. The 

 investigation of the UN and its agencies by the U.S. Comptroller 

 General, the disillusionment with the UN and Foreign Aid in the 

 Congress and pressure there for reducing the budgets of international 

 organizations, the traditional preference in the Congress for bilateral 

 assistance over multilateral organizations, all flow in part from this 

 lack of control or power over the organization while paying the largest 

 share of the organization's bills.^^ One committee of the Congress lias 

 expressed concern that the United States has not effectively "utilized 

 economic assistance in the bilateral aid jorograms for leverage 

 purposes." "^ 



To overcome con.o-re-.sional and public disappointment Avith the UN, 

 action is called for to strengthen the organization and its affiliates, 

 and to effect a better understanding of its intrinsic limitations. One 

 step is to identify clearly the principal points of disillusionment in an 

 organization as large and complex a'^ the United Nat'ons. For example, 

 when Mr. Ledge ])ointed to "a dramatic drop in public support for 

 the UN in the T iiited States * * * a five-year decline — from 84 per- 

 cent to 51 percent — in the number of Americans who feel that the 



»» "Health of Mankind." op. cit.. page 208. 



^ "UN Weak, Nixon told b.v Lodge." Detroit Free Press, (September 14, 1970), page 2-B. 



"* See U.S. Congress. Senate, and U.S. Congress. House Committee on Appropriations. 

 "State, Justice, Commerce, and the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriatiors, Pascal 

 Year 1971. Hearings. 91st Congress, second session. (Washington, U.S. Government Printing 

 Office, 1970), pages 4.S1-494 and 349-414, respectively. 



™ U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations. "Econom.y and Efficiency 

 of U.S. Participation in International Organizations." Hearing before a Subcommittee of 

 the . . ., September IS, 1970, 91st Congress, second session (Washington, U.S. Government 

 Printing Office, 1070), pages 45-55. 



