HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS FOR YR 3 NCE FCEE

Historical overview of International Organization

The League of Nations was the first permanent early international Organization that lasted for some years. The first meeting of the League of Nations was held in 1920 at Geneva in Switzerland. It was created by the Versailles and other peace treaties ending World War I. The upbraided nationalism that had inflamed Europe in the early 20th century was widely seen as a major cause of World War I. The horrendous losses in the War convinced many Europeans that there must never be another war.

 A League of Nations proposed by the 28th US president (1856 - 1924) Woodrow Wilson who served in office from 1913 to 1921 and lead America through World War 1(1914 - 1918) was seen as a way of preventing war in the future through a system of collective security. The League was a culmination of other political thinkers who had late the intellectual background; men like the duke de Sully and Immaniuel Kant. The League failed in the face of Fascism (a RIGHT WING political system in which people’s lives were completely controlled by the state and no political opposition is allowed to air their views on it was used in Germany and Italy in the 1930s and 40s). Its successor was the United Nations (UN)

Original Members of the League of Nations - January 10, 1920 Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, el Salvador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Netherlands, New Zealand Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Persia, Peru Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Siam, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa, United Kingdom, Uruguay Venezuela, Yugoslavia (40 members).
1920	Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Finland, Luxembourg were admitted to the League
1921	Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania are admitted to the League
1922	Hungary was admitted to the League
1923	Ethiopia, Ireland are admitted to the League
1924	Dominican Republic is admitted to the League
1925	Costa Rica withdraws from the League
1926	Germany is admitted to the League Brazil withdraws from the League
1931	Mexico is admitted to the League
1932	Iraq, Turkey are admitted to the League
1933	Germany, Japan withdraw from the League
1934	Afghanistan, Ecuador, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics are admitted to the League
1935	Paraguay withdraws from the League
1936	Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua withdraw from the League
1937	Egypt is admitted to the League el Salvador, Italy withdraw from the League
1938	Chile, Venezuela withdraw from the League Austria is annexed by Germany
1939	Hungary, Peru, Spain withdrew from the League Albania is annexed by Italy Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is expelled from the League
1940	Rumania withdrew from the League
1942	Haiti withdrew from the League

Source: Adopted from: "Essential Facts about the League of Nations," Tenth Edition (Revised), LON Information Section, Geneva, 1939, pp. 11-29.

 If we take a look at the original members of the League of Nations, from the data above we see how their down fall began by some members pulling out, the annexed of Albania by Italy and the expelling of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Their failure started from 1933 - 1942 and finally seized to exist after the world war 11 in 1939 - 45. Also the United states that are among the world powers are not part of the League of Nation.

Article 11 of the League’s Covenant stated:

‘‘Any war of threat of war is a matter of concern to the whole league and the league shall take action that may safeguard peace’’

Therefore, any conflict between nations which ended in war and the victor of one over the other must be considered as the League failure.

Successes of the League of Nations

The League settled various cases that were tabled before them.

v  First they quickly proved its value by settling the Swedish-Finnish dispute over the Åland Islands (1920–21),

v  guaranteeing the security of Albania (1921),

v  rescuing Austria from economic disaster,

v  settling the division of Upper Silesia (1922),

v  and preventing the outbreak of war in the Balkans between Greece and Bulgaria (1925). In addition,

v  the League extended considerable aid to refugees; it helped to suppress white slave and opium traffic;

v   it did pioneering work in surveys of health; it extended financial aid to the needy states; and it furthered international cooperation in labor relations and many other fields.

 Failures of the League of Nations

The problem of bringing its political influence to bear, especially on the great powers, soon made itself felt.

v  This was when their failures started by Poland refusing  to abide by the League decision in the Vilnius dispute, and the League was forced to stand by powerlessly in the face of the French occupation of the Ruhr (1923) and Italy's occupation of Kérkira (1923).

v   Failure to take action over the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931) was a blow to the League's prestige, especially when followed by Japan's withdrawal from the League (1933).

v  Another serious failure was the inability of the League to stop the Chaco War (1932–35) between Bolivia and Paraguay. In 1935 the League completed its successful 15-year administration of the Saar territory by conducting a plebiscite under the supervision of an international military force.

v   But even this success was not sufficient to offset the failure of the Disarmament Conference that lead to the, Germany's withdrawal from the League (1933),

v  and Italy's successful attack on Ethiopia in defiance of the League's economic sanctions (1935).

v   In 1936, Adolf Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland and denounced the Treaty of Versailles; in 1938 he seized Austria.

v  The league was faced by threats to international peace from all sides; the Spanish civil war,

v  Japan's resumption of war against China (1937),

v  and finally the appeasement of Hitler at Munich (1938) and finally the League collapsed. German’s claims on Danzig, where the League commissioner had been reduced to impotence, led to the outbreak of World War II.

The last important act of the League came in Dec., 1939, when it expelled the USSR for its attack on Finland. In 1940 the League secretariat in Geneva was reduced to a skeleton staff; some of the technical services were removed to the United States and Canada. The allied International Labor Organization continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the United Nations. In 1946 the League dissolved itself, and its services and real estate (notably the Palais des Nations in Geneva) were transferred to the United Nations. The League's chief success lay in providing the first pattern of permanent international organization, a pattern on which much of the United Nations was modeled. Its failures were due as much to the indifference of the great powers, which preferred to reserve important matters for their own decisions, as to weaknesses of the organization.