Cooperation for Economic and Social Progress

Abstract

In the UN system, far more time, effort and money go into cooperation to promote economic and social progress than into any other endeavour. More than 80 per cent of the personnel of the global agencies, including the United Nations itself, work on issues concerning a higher level of general welfare for the world’s people. A huge list of programmes covers practically every human preoccupation, from the condition of the world environment, down to better methods of drying dishes in outdoor tropical kitchens. The vast scope of these programmes has generated an organizational tangle so complex that, some observers have concluded, it is beyond either understanding or management. Yet all of it is intended to contribute, and arguably to some extent does, to ‘the creation of conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations…’ [Art. 55, UN Charter]. If so, its slow course contrasts sharply with the crisis atmosphere of the conflicts taken up in the Security Council, but the issues may be no less important to the long-run future of mankind.