The Rotary Balita no. 756 (October 21, 1954).

The United Nations is a beginning.

It is an old story, because man's longing is old. It is a new story because it is happening today. But more important, it is every man's story.

Nine years ago, on 24 October, the United Nations came into being. But the men who signed the Charter were not merely entering into a legal agreement between states. They were trying to answer an anguished world, they were expressing man's deepest hope the right to live in peace and human dignity.

The purposes to which they pledged collective effort were simple: Peace, Security, Hu Rights, Law, Freedom. They were all essential without one, the others could fail. They are old words, but they are on the side of life, they mean civilization.

Today, sixty nations and their two thousand million people are committed to them.

They are committed to an ideal which has become a necessity and to a method of achieving it: committed because of man's instinct to live.

We talk of the "shrinking world" and "interdependence" but at the same time we are conscious of differences between groups and nations and interests. The United Nations is the proving ground of our beliefs, the place where all may-and must learn to "practice tolerance and live together as good neighbors."

When we do, our very differences can mean strength; and the building for peace, still at ground level, will rise as high as the hopes of man.


What is the alternative?

"The gravity of the time is such that every new avenue of peace, no matter how dimly discernible, should be explored." These are the words of the President of the United States.

"A new world war with modern weapons of war means the destruction of civilization." These are the words of the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union.

"The process of learning to live together without war in this torn and distracted world of ours is going to be painful and a constant challenge for the rest of our lives. Yet we know what the choice is. Either we manage it, or we face disaster." These are the words of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. They say that the job is now, and will always be now.

To maintain international peace, to develop friendly relations, to remove threats to the peace: this is the Charter's purpose.

For the first time, the problems and disputes that might lead to war can be prevented from doing so.

For the first time, nations acting together can order a cease-fire and bring warring peoples face to face round the conference table." For the first time, nations acting together can use force to stop aggression. The job has just begun.

IN INDONESIA—Here, nations acting together helped not only to stop fighting but to build peace; peace that gave an ancient people "a new birth of freedom."

IN KOREA—For the first time in history an international body used force in the common interest to mend a breach in the line of peace. It took two years from the start of talks at Panmunjon to reach an armistice. It took seven months more to agree on the time and place for a peace conference. But who will measure this time against a third world war?

IN PALESTINE—It took one year for the Uni- ted Nations to stop a war that might have engulfed the world. For five years now there has been an uneasy armistice. Across guarded demarcation lines, ancient fears face each other; the wounds are deep and may take long to heal. But the effort, in hundreds of meetings and millions of words, must be made. For what is the alternative?

The United Nations cannot by itself enforce peace, it cannot impose agreement. But in an age of total war and new weapons, neither can any alliance. The United Nations has been created so people can live together. In its Charter, nations have the means to come to terms other and with this new age.

Today tolerance is a necessity. Sometimes it may come hard. The price may be high-in time and endurance but so is the stake: survival.


Life means shelter, food, warmth.

Man's eternal enemies common to all races and peoples are still very much with us.

What does a farmer feel when he sees his land blown away by the wind?

What does a mother feel when she knows her child will die?

What does a man feel when he has no home?

What does a young nation feel when it does not have the things to make it live?

It is to solve these problems through constructive international cooperation that the Charter declares that the United Nations shall promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.

We see that two-thirds of the people in this world live in want, that most of them do not have enough to eat. We see that, even when there is knowledge and skill, nations lack the means to develop their resources; that the rich countries become richer and the poor comparatively poorer. From such a situation comes fear, from fear despair, from despair war.

We see that one man's prosperity depends on his neighbor's well-being. We see that we must unite to help ourselves and that, if we do, man for the first time has the knowledge to defeat these ancient enemies.

We have begun to help ourselves through United Nations action on many fronts beginning wit first aid for sudden calamities: help for victims of an earthquake in Peru, a cholera epidemic in Egypt, a flood in Iraq, a famine on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines.

And there is action that goes on from month to month, year to year:

DISEASE: By early 1954, the United Nations Children's Fund had helped millions of children and expectant mothers in 78 countries and territories — 13 million had been protected against malaria, 28 million vaccinated against tuberculosis— 2,500,000 treated for yaws. Some 12 million children and mothers had received milk and other foods. These are good figures, but they are only a beginning. For example, it is estimated that only five per cent of those afflicted with yaws in the world have been treated.

EROSION: With an International Bank loan, India is reclaiming one and one-half million acres of land. In seven years this barren waste will yield 500,000 tons of wheat. health, work, life. That means food, health, work, life.

IGNORANCE: Great campaigns for literacy and adult education are being waged in many countries with the help of the United Nations and its related agencies, especially UNESCO. But this is the fact more than 50 per cent of the world's population cannot read or write.

THE HOMELESS: This is the cry of a refugee, one of 2,000,000 uprooted by war: "I am not wanted anywhere... something should be done but how and who should do it I don't know... This man eventually did find a home in England, through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Since the war, over 1,000,000 refugees have found new homes, through United Nations efforts. Today, 500,000 still have nowhere to go, and daily more refugees come seeking a home. There are some 880,000 Arab refugees the United Nations must care for; there are millions in Korea the United Nations is dedicated to help back to a normal life.

And there is common action for the future, for the next generation. To anticipate tensions, to prevent conflicts, to plan today for life tomorrow: this is what we owe to our children.

If this is a time of survival, this is also the time, in the words of the historian, when man dared to think of the welfare of the human race as a practicable objective.

The science that makes a bomb makes this idea practical. Nations and peoples lacking adequate scientific knowledge can learn through others who have the skills and are willing to share them. The United Nations, with its specialized agencies, has begun to put this idea to work. Its technical assistance program and the coordinated effort of its related agencies are the greatest organized sharing of skills ever attempted. They answer a challenge that will remain even when threats to peace have been removed.

How to teach? How to care for a baby? How to forecast the weather? How to build a factory? How to use a reaper or even a hoe? How to survey your land? How to market your crafts? How to save your soil? The requests, the needs are endless.

The United Nations expert who studies public health in an Indian village, the hydrologist in an Eastern desert, the agronomist in an Afghan cotton field, the administrator helping a Bolivian ministry, the pattern craftsman working in Indonesia, the metallurgist in an iron foundry—these specialists from other lands do not come as national representatives. They come on behalf of a world community, invited as guests, to teach and to give and, perhaps, to learn.

By 1 January, 1954, some 3,500 experts from 68 nations had served, or were serving 71 countries, and some 4,200 fellows and scholars had received
or were receiving training in 98 countries. This is international cooperation at work.


Life means dignity.

To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person why does the Charter say it?

Life is more than food and warmth. Life is spirit: free thought and opinion, free assembly, a fair trial. The struggle for freedom is as old as man. It never ends, because it is a part of man's struggle.

Today other rights have been recognized: the right to work, education, health all those rights necessary to give meaning to man's freedom.
These are written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the first statement not of one nation, or one people or one group but of the conscience of the emerging world community. It is a statement that cuts across national frontiers. It affirms the faith that, given these rights, man can be free, responsible to himself and to his neighbor.

This is the goal towards which man must and will always strive.

If the ideals and purposes of the United Nations are just and necessary, they have to prevail everywhere, not only in the domain of its sovereign Member states. Member states responsible for non-self-governing territories have a solemn compact with the United Nations to advance the interests of the inhabitants. The information they supply is studied and debated at length so that the world. remains conscious as never before of the progress and problems of dependent peoples.

The United Nations has a special relationship to the inhabitants of United Nations Trust Territories. Through the work of the Trusteeship Council — its examination of reports, its hearing of petitions and its dispatch of visiting missions for first-hand studies—the United Nations keeps watch over the advancement of the peoples and is a continual influence for speeding progress.

Most of us know that our day-to-day life depends on a good system of national law, but the idea of the development of international law sounds remote, and academic. Yet there can be no national security or lasting peace without a healthy growth of the law of nations. Through the decisions and opinions of the International Court of Justice, the new conventions worked out by several United Nations bodies and the studies of the International Law Commission, more has been achieved in this field in the nine years of the United Nations than in any other period. But here again the task of developing a world rule of law has only just begun. The United Nations does not provide peace, it cannot itself offer the essentials of life or ensure human dignity. But it is the expression of man's will to live, and it is the means man has devised to achieve a sane and decent world. Given the faith and the will, it can make these hopes real.

But the United Nations is only as strong as the will of its Member states to unite their efforts. And the Member states are only as strong as the will of their people. And the people are you and I everybody.

The United Nations, born of man's anguish and longing, lives through his will and his hope. He is involved in it, and is finally responsible for it—the Charter is an expression of his faith in life. That is the meaning of United Nations Day. The United Nations is what he wants and what he will make of it.

It is only a beginning.

"...It will be a constant challenge for the rest of our lives."


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THE UNITED NATIONS AND ITS SPECIALIZED AGENCIES

The United Nations, in structure, is an international organization of independent and sovereign states. It provides machinery through which the world's peoples may work together and cooperate with each other to find ways and means to solve the mutual problems and to foster international understanding. The United Nations should be looked upon not as an organizational strait-jacket on the world or on the independent states which ROTARY are its Members, but as an organ for free cooperation of the nations, inside the framework of agreed procedures and supported by a permanent civil service.

October 24 of this year marks the ninth anniversary of the United Nations.

AIMS AND PRINCIPLES

Working towards the aims of collective security, peaceful settlement of international disputes, effective control of armaments and international cooperation to advance economic and social well- being, the United Nations has provided machinery through which peoples of the world may cooperate and work together. As the bitter clashes of power and ideology become more apparent in the world, the United Nations survives as the best hope of mankind to avoid a cataclysmic world war.

POLITICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Through mediation and conciliation, the United Nations has helped to end bloodshed in Indonesia, Greece, Palestine and Kashmir, and the Republics of Indonesia and Israel were brought into the family of nations. In Korea armed aggression was successfully repelled by the military forces of 16 Member Nations plus the Republic of Korea in the first collective military measures ever called for by an international organization.

COLLECTIVE SECURITY

Soon after the outbreak of the Korean hostilities, the United Nations resolved to strengthen collective security. This was done by equipping the General Assembly, representing all 60 Member Nations, with emergency procedures for recommending necessary collective action for maintaining peace in case the Security Council fails to act because of the negative vote of any of its five permanent members.

SHARING SKILLS

From a long-range point of view, the technical assistance operations of the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies are intended to help provide the less developed areas with more of the skills they need in their effort to alleviate the miseries of hunger, disease, illiteracy and poverty. Since the start of the UN technical assistance program, financed from voluntary contributions by governments, in July 1950, scientific knowledge and technical skills have been shared in a variety of ways and extended to nearly 120 countries and territories. For instance, long-range programs have been undertaken to assist in the construction of irrigation schemes and to increase food production. Shorter-range projects that have already shown results include the campaigns against malaria and yaws, and the work to improve cottage industries. The Philippines has been receiving technical assistance under the UN program since 1951. To date, 13 projects have been completed, 8 are at present in execution and 16 more are in the planning stage following requests by the Philippine government.

REGIONAL COORDINATION

Through facilities provided by the United Nations' regional commissions, countries in Europe, Asia and the Far East and Latin America have been able to cooperate on working out solutions for many of their common economic problems and subsequently to lay some of the essential foundations for economic progress. The Philippines partakes in this work as a member of the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE).

SOCIAL IMPROVEMENTS

As an effort to improve social well-being, the United Nations, working with its specialized agencies, is helping to provide studies and services which will improve sanitary, health and labor conditions. Programs include improvement and expansion of educational facilities and teacher training. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was created by the UN to carry out maternal and child welfare programs. To date, UNICEF has allocated P4,392,800 to further child health in the Philippines.

HUMAN RIGHTS

The basic rights of man and fundamental freedoms for all without discrimination as to race, sex, language or religion are clearly defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The completion of two draft covenants on Human Rights by the Human Rights Commission this summer marks a milestone in United Nations efforts to clarify and define these rights.

FOR NON-SELF GOVERNING PEOPLE

In accordance with the spirit and provisions of the Chapter, the United Nations, through its Trusteeship Council, has been following the welfare and progress of the millions of people of dependent territories, with self-government or independence the ultimate goal. Through the efforts of the United Nations, Libya became an independent state, Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia as an autonomous unit, and the former Italian colony of Somaliland was placed under Italian trusteeship to be prepared for independence in 1960. Through the United Nations, the world is kept alive to the aspirations and advancement of all peoples. The principal bodies of the United Nations are:

General Assembly
Security Council
Economic and Social Council
Trusteeship Council International Court of Justice
Secretariat

Associated with the United Nations through its Economic and Social Council are 10 intergovernmental organizations known as Specialized Agencies. These are:

International Labor Organization (ILO)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (WORLD BANK)
International Monetary Fund (WORLD FUND) World Health Organization (WHO)
Universal Postal Union (UPU)
International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
World Meteorological Organization (WMO)