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Chapter 14: History: Major Agencies of the United Nations

In 1960, Egypt began building a great dam across the Nile at Aswan. The dam would give the country electricity and water for its fields. It would also create a reservoir long enough to drown the valley of Nubia upstream. In that valley, cut straight into a cliff face, stood the temples of Abu Simbel. Workmen had carved them out of the living rock in the reign of Ramesses II, more than three thousand years ago. Egypt and Sudan faced a hard choice: the dam or the temples. They did not settle it alone. They took the problem to UNESCO, and in 1960 UNESCO opened an international appeal for money, engineers and expert advice. Dozens of governments answered, including many with no connection to Egypt at all. The plan that followed sounds impossible. Engineers sawed the temples into large numbered blocks, lifted them clear of the rising water, and rebuilt them on higher ground above the new lake. The work at Abu Simbel was finished in 1968. The dam was built. The temples still stand. Nothing about that rescue was an ordinary government job. No single country owned the problem, and no single country could have paid for it or staffed it. That is exactly the gap the specialised agencies of the United Nations were built to fill — in heritage, in health, and in the lives of children.

Diagram

Fig. 14.0-1 Caption: The temples of Abu Simbel stand today on ground far above the level at which they were carved. Brief: Photograph or drawing of the Abu Simbel rock-cut temple front, with its seated colossal figures. Label the temple façade and the present ground level; add a faint horizontal line lower down marked ‘original site, now under the reservoir’. Emphasise the height difference between the two levels.

NoteCuriosity Corner

Q1. Why does the United Nations work through separate specialised agencies instead of doing every job itself? Q2. In which cities do UNICEF, WHO and UNESCO have their headquarters? Q3. What is the World Heritage List, and what does UNESCO actually do for the monuments named on it? Q4. Which agency was created for children, and what kinds of work does it do for them? Q5. If a disease began spreading across several countries at once, which agency’s functions would come into play, and how? This chapter will answer each of these questions.

14.1 Working Through Specialised Agencies

The United Nations does most of its best-known work through its main organs. Delegates meet, debate, vote and pass resolutions, and the world reads about it the next morning. But a resolution does not vaccinate a child, teach a girl to read, or hold up a temple wall.

That is the problem the founders of the United Nations had to solve. Hunger, disease, illiteracy and the loss of cultural treasures cross borders and last for decades. Work of that kind needs laboratories, field staff, standards, money and patience — not a debate and a vote.

So the United Nations does not attempt every task from a single headquarters. It works through a family of separate bodies, each responsible for one field. A specialised agency is an international organisation with its own constitution, its own budget and its own member states, linked to the United Nations by agreement and given charge of one area of work.

The syllabus asks you to study three of them. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) works for children. The World Health Organization (WHO) works for health. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) works for education, science, culture and communication.

Q. Are these three bodies part of the United Nations itself?

A. WHO and UNESCO are separate organisations with their own constitutions, tied to the UN by agreement. UNICEF was created by the General Assembly and remains part of the UN, though it is usually counted with the agencies.

Each of the three keeps a headquarters of its own, in a different city and a different country. That is not an accident of history alone. Spreading the head offices spreads influence, and keeps the whole system from being run out of one capital.

Why The Work Was Split Up Health, schooling and child welfare need daily work in thousands of places → a body that meets in sessions cannot run such work → member states created separate agencies with their own staff, budgets and head offices → each agency took charge of one field and answered for it.

Q1. Why does the United Nations work through separate specialised agencies instead of doing every job itself?

A. Because health, education and child welfare are long, technical, everyday tasks. They need permanent staff, laboratories and field offices, which a body of delegates meeting in session cannot provide.

What An Agency Cannot Do

There is a limit to all of this, and it is worth fixing in your mind before you read further. None of these agencies governs anybody. They cannot make a law, collect a tax, or order a government to act.

What they can do is different, and often powerful. They advise, they train, they fund, they supply equipment, they set standards that governments choose to adopt, and they publish figures that other countries can read. Work happens when a national government agrees to work with them, and stops when it does not.

This is why the same agency looks strong in one country and almost invisible in another. The agency has not changed; the government’s willingness has.

Should An Agency Be Able To Order A Government? One view: Diseases and floods ignore borders, so an agency that can only advise will always arrive too late to matter. Another view: A country governs itself, and an outside body with power to command would take decisions that its own citizens never voted on. What would you need to know to decide?

14.2 The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

Of the three bodies in this chapter, UNICEF is the one built around a group of people rather than a subject. Its concern is not health, or schooling, or water. It is children, and whatever children happen to need.

The General Assembly created the fund in 1946 for the children of a Europe wrecked by war. Within a few years its work had shifted to the developing countries, where it remains. The name changed with the work, but the short form UNICEF was already familiar and was kept.

Today UNICEF works in more than 190 countries and territories, alongside national governments rather than above them. Its emblem, shown in Fig. 14.2-1, is worth a moment’s attention before you read its functions.

Diagram

Fig. 14.2-1 Caption: The UNICEF emblem places a mother and child at the centre of a globe. Brief: The UNICEF emblem — a globe showing lines of latitude and longitude, with the silhouette of a mother holding a child in front of it, the whole framed by two olive branches. Label the olive branches as the United Nations wreath. Emphasise that the mother and child, not the globe, sit at the centre.

An emblem is an argument in a single picture. The olive branches are the United Nations wreath, so the fund is announcing where it belongs. Placing a mother and child in front of the world announces what it thinks should come first.

Fig. 14.2-1 This is the fund describing itself → the mother and child at the centre say whose needs come first, and the wreath places the fund inside the United Nations → but an emblem records an intention, not a result. It cannot tell you whether one child was actually fed or vaccinated.

14.2.1 Headquarters

UNICEF has its headquarters in New York, in the United States, the city that also houses the main organs of the United Nations.

The head office is not where most of the work happens. UNICEF runs country offices and field offices in the countries it serves, and these do the negotiating, buying and training on the ground.

14.2.2 Functions

UNICEF’s stated purpose is to look after the welfare of children, especially in developing countries, by helping to provide low-cost services close to where families actually live. Its main functions are these.

  1. It works for the survival, health and well-being of children, in cooperation with governments, local bodies, voluntary groups and private organisations.

  2. It supports immunisation — the giving of vaccines that train the body to resist a disease before it strikes. Protecting every child against preventable diseases has been one of its leading goals.

  3. It works on nutrition, tackling the undernourishment that stunts growth and leaves a child open to infection.

  4. It works for clean drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, supplying pipes, pumps and toilets and teaching their use.

  5. It supports basic education, with particular attention to girls and to children who have never been enrolled at all.

  6. It provides technical supplies and equipment — paper for textbooks, medicines and instruments for health clinics, cold storage for vaccines.

  7. It funds the training of people who deliver these services: health workers, sanitation workers, teachers and nutritionists.

  8. It helps children and mothers in emergencies caused by natural calamities, epidemics and civil conflict.

  9. It speaks on behalf of children, upholds the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and works for its implementation.

The Convention On The Rights Of The Child The General Assembly adopted this treaty in 1989. It sets out what every person under eighteen is entitled to — survival, health care, schooling, a name and a nationality, protection from exploitation, and a hearing in decisions that affect them. Countries that accept it report on how far they are keeping to it.

One Sachet, One Function

Several of those functions come together in a single cheap object. Oral rehydration salts are a measured mixture of sugar and salts, stirred into clean water and drunk, which replaces what the body loses in a severe attack of diarrhoea.

Case 14.1 — A Sachet Of Salts Diarrhoea kills young children not by itself but by drying them out. For a long time the treatment thought necessary was a hospital drip, which most villages had no way of reaching. Research established that a carefully balanced drink of sugar, salt and clean water works for most cases, and can be given by a mother at home. UNICEF and WHO agreed a standard formula, and UNICEF began supplying the sachets in bulk and training health workers and mothers to use them. The Government of India built the treatment into its own child-health programme, and the packets are now handed out through health centres across the country. The case shows what these agencies actually do: they do not run the health service, they supply, standardise, train and persuade — and the treatment then belongs to the country using it.

Q4. Which agency was created for children, and what kinds of work does it do for them?

A. UNICEF. It supports immunisation, nutrition, clean water, sanitation and basic education, supplies equipment, trains workers, helps children in emergencies, and speaks for children’s rights.

Next time you pass a health centre or an anganwadi, read the posters on its wall. Note which of the tasks listed in this section they deal with.

Notice what runs through the whole list. UNICEF does not govern children, and it does not replace a country’s schools or hospitals. It supplies, funds, trains and argues — and every one of those functions depends on a government being willing to work with it.

14.3 The World Health Organization (WHO)

The World Health Organization is the United Nations agency for health. Its Constitution came into force on 7 April 1948, and that date is kept every year as World Health Day.

Before you read what WHO does, read how it defines the thing it exists to protect. The opening lines of its Constitution set a standard far wider than most people expect.

Source 14.1 — How The WHO Defines Health From: the Constitution of the World Health Organization, adopted in 1946 and in force from 7 April 1948 “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Discuss: What kinds of work does this definition oblige WHO to take up that a narrower definition would have left out?

That sentence does real work. If health were only the absence of illness, WHO could confine itself to medicines and hospitals. By including mental and social well-being, the definition pulls in clean water, food, housing, safety and dignity.

But a definition is a statement of aim, not a description of the world. It tells you what the organisation set out to achieve in 1948. It cannot tell you how close anybody has come to it since.

Source 14.1 A founding document says what its authors wanted → here they refuse to settle for ‘not ill’ and demand physical, mental and social well-being together → but this is an aim written into a constitution. It does not tell you whether any country has reached it, or who is expected to pay.

14.3.1 Headquarters

The headquarters of WHO is in Geneva, in Switzerland.

Geneva is where policy, standards and global figures are settled. The day-to-day work is divided among regional offices, and India belongs to the South-East Asia region, whose office is in New Delhi.

14.3.2 Functions

WHO’s stated objective is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health. Its main functions follow from that.

  1. It directs and coordinates health work at the international level, so that countries act on the same information rather than each guessing alone.

  2. It helps countries build up their health systems — trained staff, institutions, hospitals and services for both the individual and the community.

  3. It supplies important drugs and vaccines needed for medical care, and has run programmes to immunise children against major diseases: measles, diphtheria, tetanus, tuberculosis, polio and whooping cough.

  4. It sets standards for the strength and purity of medicines, including biological products, so that a drug means the same thing in every country that uses it.

  5. It promotes and arranges research into the causes, prevention and cure of disease, including cancer and heart disease, and helps train research workers.

  6. It works for safe drinking water, adequate waste disposal, nutrition, and maternal and child health, because most illness begins outside the hospital.

  7. It organises conferences, seminars and training for health-care personnel from different countries.

  8. It fights the spread of communicable disease and coordinates the response when an epidemic breaks out — that is, when a disease spreads rapidly through a population at one time.

  9. It collects and publishes health information and statistics, including journals such as the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, so that governments and researchers can see what is happening beyond their own borders.

Why Health Needs An International Body A germ crosses a border in a passenger, not through customs → one country alone can therefore never make itself safe → but no country will act on another’s figures unless it trusts how they were collected → so member states set up a body to agree the standards, hold the data and coordinate the response.

The One That Was Finished

Most health work is endless. One campaign, however, actually ended, and it is the clearest illustration of what a coordinating agency can do.

WHO launched an intensified programme against smallpox in 1967. Eradication means removing a disease from the world entirely, so that it no longer occurs naturally anywhere.

Case 14.2 — The End Of Smallpox Smallpox had killed and blinded people for centuries, and a vaccine had existed for a very long time without ending it. Vaccinating everyone was impossible; the campaign therefore switched method, hunting down each outbreak and vaccinating the ring of people around it. WHO supplied the vaccine, the standards and the reporting system; national health workers walked the villages and did the finding. India’s last case was recorded in 1975 and the world’s last known natural case in Somalia in 1977. In 1980 the World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated. Notice what made it possible: a disease with no animal host, a reliable vaccine, and governments willing to report their own outbreaks honestly. Where any of those three is missing, the same method does not work — which is why so few diseases have followed smallpox.

Q. Why is World Health Day kept on 7 April?

A. Because WHO’s Constitution came into force on that date in 1948. The day is used each year to draw public attention to one health theme.

Q5. If a disease began spreading across several countries at once, which agency’s functions would come into play, and how?

A. WHO’s. It would coordinate the international response, supply drugs and vaccines, set the standards for treatment and reporting, and publish the figures that let every government see what was happening.

Two limits are worth holding on to. WHO does not run any country’s hospitals, and it cannot compel a government to report an outbreak it would rather hide. Its coordinating power rests on agreement, and agreement can be withdrawn.

14.4 The United Nations Educational, Scientific And Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

A conference met in London in November 1945 to design an organisation for education, science and culture. The body it planned, UNESCO, came into being on 4 November 1946.

The timing explains the idea. Two world wars had just been fought by educated, scientifically advanced nations. The delegates concluded that peace could not be built by treaties alone, and said so in the opening line of UNESCO’s Constitution.

Source 14.2 — Where Wars Begin From: the Preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO, adopted in London in November 1945 “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” Discuss: If this sentence is taken seriously, why would an organisation for peace spend its money on schools, laboratories and libraries?

The sentence is a claim about causes, and it is a contested one. It locates the origin of war in ideas — in ignorance, suspicion and prejudice — and therefore in something that education might reach.

Other explanations of war were available in 1945, and are still argued today: rivalry over territory, markets and resources, or the ambition of particular governments. The preamble does not disprove them. What it does is state the assumption on which UNESCO’s whole programme rests, which is why every function below is a form of teaching, sharing or preserving.

Source 14.2 Founders explaining themselves → they claim war starts in ideas, so peace must be built there → but this is a statement of belief, not a finding. It cannot tell you whether education has in fact prevented any war, and it quietly sets aside causes like territory and trade.

UNESCO’s stated objective follows from that preamble. It works to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science, culture and communication, so as to further respect for justice, for the rule of law and for human rights.

14.4.1 Headquarters

The headquarters of UNESCO is in Paris, in France.

Q2. In which cities do UNICEF, WHO and UNESCO have their headquarters?

A. UNICEF in New York, in the United States; WHO in Geneva, in Switzerland; UNESCO in Paris, in France.

14.4.2 Functions

UNESCO’s work is organised in sectors. Four of them matter for this chapter: education, science, culture and communication.

14.4.2.1 Education

Education is the largest field of UNESCO’s activity, and the one closest to the preamble’s argument.

  1. It works for the removal of illiteracy, encouraging adult education, distance education and open schooling for those who cannot attend a regular school.

  2. It lays emphasis on the education of women and girls, who are still the larger share of those never enrolled.

  3. It provides financial assistance for the education of children with disabilities.

  4. It gives grants and fellowships to teachers and scholars, and helps countries organise library systems.

  5. It organises book fairs and festivals at national and international levels.

  6. It encourages science education by supporting regional training centres.

  7. It promotes education itself as an instrument of international understanding, rather than only as a route to employment.

The fourth of those functions has a visible result in India. The Delhi Public Library was set up in 1951 with UNESCO’s assistance, and grew into a large metropolitan library system.

14.4.2.2 Science

  1. It organises seminars and conferences of scientists from different countries, and circulates their findings through journals, the press and exhibitions. Its magazine, the UNESCO Courier, has appeared in Hindi and Tamil editions as well as in its main languages.

  2. It promotes basic research in fields such as geology, mathematics, physics and oceanography, and finances engineering and technology schemes in developing countries.

  3. It works to correct the imbalance in scientific and technical manpower, which is heavily concentrated in the industrialised countries.

  4. It encourages the study of the social sciences, in order to focus attention on discrimination in all its forms, on the status of women, and on the problems of the young.

14.4.2.3 Culture And Heritage

Cultural heritage means what a community has inherited from its past and wishes to pass on — buildings, objects, texts, and also practices. UNESCO’s aim here is modernisation without the loss of cultural identity and diversity.

  1. World Heritage List. UNESCO prepares a list identifying the monuments and sites that are to be protected, and provides technical advice, equipment and funds for their preservation.

  2. Manuscripts. It works to protect the world’s inheritance of books, works of art and rare manuscripts.

  3. Intangible Cultural Heritage. Intangible cultural heritage is what cannot be fenced or roofed: oral traditions, performing arts, rituals, festive events, knowledge about nature, and traditional craft skills passed from one generation to the next. UNESCO gives an ICH tag to recognise these.

  4. Art. It encourages creation in literature and the fine arts.

  5. Films. It attends to cultural development through the medium of film.

  6. Travel grants. It sends cultural missions between countries and has funded travel by writers and artists, so that contacts are made across borders.

India’s entries on the intangible list include the Kutiyattam Sanskrit theatre of Kerala, the tradition of Vedic chanting, Ramlila, the Chhau dance, the Kalbelia folk songs and dances of Rajasthan, Buddhist chanting of Ladakh, Sankirtana of Manipur, the brass and copper craft of the Thatheras of Jandiala Guru, Yoga, the Kumbh Mela, Durga Puja in Kolkata, and Garba of Gujarat.

Notice how varied that list is, and how little the items have in common except being alive. A dance, a craft and a festival survive only while people still perform them, which is exactly why a tag was thought necessary.

The monuments are easier to see. Map 14.1 shows a selection of India’s World Heritage Sites.

Map

Map 14.1 Caption: A selection of India’s World Heritage Sites, shown on a present-day map. Brief: Present-day political map of India, showing the full extent of India as officially defined by the Government of India, including Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh; all international boundaries as officially recognised by the Government of India. Mark and label a selection of World Heritage Sites: the Taj Mahal at Agra, Qutub Minar at Delhi, the Ajanta Caves, the Khajuraho group, the Sun Temple at Konark, the Great Living Chola Temples in Tamil Nadu, the walled city of Jaipur, Hampi, Kaziranga National Park and the Western Ghats. Use one symbol for cultural sites and a different symbol for natural sites, with a key. Do NOT show state boundaries, so that the sites are not read as belonging to particular states.

The map makes one thing plain: these sites are of every kind and period, and several are landscapes rather than buildings. It also has an obvious limit. It shows where protected sites are, not which sites are well protected, and not the many places of local importance that no list has ever reached.

Should A Monument Belong To The World? One view: A site of outstanding value concerns all humanity, so international attention and money help to keep it standing. Another view: A monument stands on the territory of a sovereign country, whose people should decide what to preserve and how. What would you need to know to decide?

Q3. What is the World Heritage List, and what does UNESCO actually do for the monuments named on it?

A. It is UNESCO’s list of monuments and sites identified for protection. For them UNESCO supplies technical advice, expert assistance, equipment and funds — the preservation work itself is done by the country concerned.

14.4.2.4 Communication

  1. It develops communication for the spread of information, setting up regional networks and training technicians in both the hardware and the software of informatics.

  2. It works to improve the quality of the press, of films and of video services.

  3. It assists developing countries in building their own communication systems.

  4. It upholds the freedom of the press and the independence of the media.

Find one World Heritage Site or one intangible heritage element from your own state. Write two lines on what would be lost if it were not kept up.

14.5 Which Agency Does What

Set the three agencies side by side and the division of labour looks tidy. Children to UNICEF, health to WHO, education and culture to UNESCO.

Real problems are not filed that neatly. Think of a village where children fall ill from unclean water and drop out of school as a result. The water and the child’s welfare are UNICEF’s business, the disease is WHO’s, and the schooling is UNESCO’s — and none of the three can fix the village alone.

So the agencies work together, and with the government of the country concerned. Immunisation is the clearest example: WHO sets the standards and the schedule, and UNICEF buys, ships and helps deliver the vaccines.

Q. If two agencies cover the same problem, who decides what is done?

A. The national government does. It asks for the help it wants, and the agencies fit their work around that request rather than around their own boundaries.

With that caution in place, the differences are still worth holding clearly, because each agency does have a centre of gravity of its own.

Table 14.1 — The Three Agencies Compared Caption: The three differ in whom they serve, where they sit, and the kind of work they characteristically do. | Basis | UNICEF | WHO | UNESCO | |—|—|—|—| | Defined by | A group of people — children | A subject — health | Fields of the mind — education, science, culture, communication | | Headquarters | New York, United States | Geneva, Switzerland | Paris, France | | Characteristic work | Supplying, funding and delivering services for children | Coordinating, standard-setting and research across countries | Teaching, preserving and circulating knowledge | | Typical output | Vaccines, water pumps, teaching materials, emergency relief | Treatment standards, disease programmes, health statistics | Literacy programmes, fellowships, heritage lists, scientific exchange | | Where you might meet it | An immunisation drive or a nutrition programme | A treatment guideline followed at a health centre | A World Heritage Site or an intangible heritage tag | Flattens: The grid suggests three sealed compartments. In practice the three often work on the same programme in the same district at the same time.

Read down the third row and a pattern appears. UNICEF is closest to delivery, WHO closest to standards, UNESCO closest to knowledge — but all three stop at the same point.

None of them governs. Each supplies, funds, trains, sets standards and argues in public, and then depends on a national government to act. That is the whole design of the system, and it is also the source of every complaint made against it.

Look at a vaccine carton at a health centre, a school textbook, or a signboard at a protected monument. See whether any agency’s name appears on it, and note which one.

14.6 Summary

  1. The main organs of the United Nations debate and decide, but debating cannot vaccinate a child or hold up a temple wall. Long, technical, everyday work needs permanent staff, laboratories and field offices, so the United Nations works through a family of separate bodies, each responsible for one field.

  2. A specialised agency is an international organisation with its own constitution, budget and member states, linked to the United Nations by agreement and given charge of one area of work. WHO and UNESCO are agencies of this kind; UNICEF was created by the General Assembly and remains part of the United Nations itself, though it is usually counted with them.

  3. UNICEF is defined by the people it serves rather than by a subject. Created in 1946 for the children of war-damaged Europe, it soon shifted its work to the developing countries.

    1. Its headquarters is in New York, in the United States, and its country and field offices do the work on the ground.
    2. Its functions cover the survival and well-being of children, immunisation, nutrition, clean water and sanitation, basic education with attention to girls, technical supplies and equipment, the training of health workers and teachers, help in emergencies, and advocacy for the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
    3. Oral rehydration salts show the pattern in miniature: UNICEF and WHO agreed a standard formula and UNICEF supplied and trained, while the treatment itself became part of India’s own child-health programme.

  4. WHO is the United Nations agency for health. Its Constitution came into force on 7 April 1948, and that date is kept as World Health Day.

    1. Its headquarters is in Geneva, in Switzerland; India belongs to its South-East Asia region, whose office is in New Delhi.
    2. Its Constitution defines health as complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity — a definition that obliges the agency to look well beyond hospitals and medicines.
    3. Its functions are to direct and coordinate international health work, strengthen national health systems, supply drugs and vaccines and run immunisation programmes, set standards for the strength and purity of medicines, promote research, work for safe water and nutrition, train health personnel, respond to epidemics, and publish health information.
    4. The smallpox campaign is the one that finished. It succeeded because the disease had no animal host, a reliable vaccine existed, and governments reported their outbreaks — which is also why so few diseases have followed it.

  5. UNESCO came into being on 4 November 1946, after a conference held in London in November 1945. Its headquarters is in Paris, in France.

    1. Its Constitution locates the origin of war in the minds of people, and its whole programme follows from that claim — which is a stated belief about causes, not a proven finding.
    2. Its objective is to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science, culture and communication.
    3. In education, its largest field, it works against illiteracy, presses for the education of women and girls, assists the education of children with disabilities, funds teachers and scholars and library systems, organises book fairs, and promotes education as an instrument of international understanding.
    4. In science it organises conferences and circulates findings, promotes basic research, funds technology schemes in developing countries, works to correct the imbalance in scientific manpower, and encourages the social sciences.
    5. In culture it prepares the World Heritage List and funds preservation, protects manuscripts, recognises intangible cultural heritage with the ICH tag, and encourages art, film and cultural exchange.
    6. In communication it builds networks and trains technicians, works to improve the press and film and video services, assists developing countries, and upholds press freedom and the independence of the media.

  6. The three fields are not sealed compartments. One unclean water source can produce a UNICEF problem, a WHO problem and a UNESCO problem in the same village, so the agencies work jointly and around what the national government asks for.

  7. Each agency has a centre of gravity of its own: UNICEF closest to delivery, WHO closest to standards, UNESCO closest to knowledge.

  8. All three stop at the same point. None of them governs, taxes or commands. They supply, fund, train, set standards and argue in public, and a national government then decides whether to act — which is why the same agency looks powerful in one country and almost invisible in another.

The Idea In One Place

These agencies exist because some problems are larger than any one country and smaller than any one debate. Disease, illiteracy and the loss of heritage cross borders and outlast governments, yet each has to be dealt with village by village.

The design answer was to build permanent bodies with money, expertise and standards, but no authority over anybody. They are strong in what they know and weak in what they can compel.

The open question is whether that trade was the right one. An agency that could order a government would act faster in an emergency; an agency that cannot must wait for consent that may never come. This chapter sets out both halves of that argument and does not settle it.

14.7 Key Terms

  1. Epidemic: A disease spreading rapidly through a population at one time.

  2. Eradication: The removal of a disease from the world entirely, so that it no longer occurs naturally anywhere.

  3. Immunisation: The giving of vaccines that train the body to resist a disease before it strikes.

  4. Intangible cultural heritage: Inherited practices that cannot be fenced or roofed — oral traditions, performing arts, rituals, festive events, knowledge about nature and craft skills.

  5. Oral rehydration salts: A measured mixture of sugar and salts, dissolved in clean water and drunk, which replaces what the body loses in severe diarrhoea.

  6. Specialised agency: An international organisation with its own constitution, budget and member states, linked to the United Nations by agreement and given charge of one field of work.

  7. World Heritage List: UNESCO’s list of monuments and sites named as needing protection, for which it supplies advice, expertise, equipment and funds.

14.8 Points to Ponder

  1. UNICEF is organised around a group of people, while WHO and UNESCO are organised around fields of work. What can an agency built around people do that an agency built around a subject would find difficult?

  2. WHO defines health as complete physical, mental and social well-being. If no country has ever fully reached that standard, is such a definition useful or self-defeating?

  3. Smallpox has been eradicated; almost no other disease has. What does that single success tell you about the conditions an international campaign needs before it can actually finish a job?

  4. UNESCO’s Constitution claims that wars begin in the minds of people. What kind of evidence would make you accept that claim, and what kind would make you doubt it?

  5. A World Heritage Site still stands on the territory of one country. When preservation and the needs of the people living around it pull in opposite directions, on what basis should the question be decided?

  6. These agencies can supply, train, fund and publish, but they cannot compel. Does that make them weaker than a government, or useful in a different way from a government?

14.9 Objective Questions

  1. The headquarters of the World Health Organization is located at
    1. New York, United States
    2. Paris, France
    3. Geneva, Switzerland
    4. London, United Kingdom [1 mark]
  2. The largest sector of UNESCO’s activity lies in the field of
    1. communication
    2. education
    3. culture
    4. health [1 mark]
  3. Which of the following is NOT a function of UNICEF?
    1. Supporting the immunisation of children
    2. Supplying equipment and medicines to health clinics
    3. Laying down standards for the purity of medicines
    4. Helping children and mothers during emergencies [1 mark]
  4. A disease begins spreading rapidly across four neighbouring countries at the same time. The agency whose functions are directly brought into play is
    1. UNESCO
    2. WHO
    3. the International Court of Justice
    4. none of the above [1 mark]
  5. Match the agency in Column I with its characteristic work in Column II. [1 mark]
Column I Column II
a. UNICEF i. Lays down standards for the strength and purity of medicines
b. WHO ii. Prepares and maintains the World Heritage List
c. UNESCO iii. Supplies oral rehydration salts and trains health workers

  1. State whether the following statement is true or false: A specialised agency of the United Nations can require a member government to carry out its recommendations. [1 mark]

  2. Select the option that shows the correct relationship between Statements (I) and (II).

  1. WHO’s work extends to safe drinking water, waste disposal and nutrition.
  2. WHO’s Constitution defines health as complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. a. (II) contradicts (I) b. (II) is the reason for (I) c. (I) is true but (II) is false d. (I) and (II) are independent of each other [1 mark]
  1. Select the option that shows the correct relationship between Statements (I) and (II).
  1. UNESCO works in the fields of education, science, culture and communication.
  2. UNESCO gives financial assistance for the education of children with disabilities. a. (II) contradicts (I) b. (I) is an example of (II) c. (II) is an example of (I) d. (I) and (II) are independent of each other [1 mark]

14.10 Check Your Concepts

  1. Name the headquarters of UNICEF, WHO and UNESCO. [2 marks]

  2. State any two functions of UNICEF in the field of child health. [2 marks]

  3. Differentiate between the way UNICEF is organised and the way WHO is organised, and give one function of each that follows from that difference. [3 marks]

  4. Why does an outbreak of disease in one country quickly become a concern for its neighbours? Explain how WHO’s functions answer this problem. [3 marks]

  5. Explain, with one example, what UNESCO does for a monument once it has been named on the World Heritage List. [4 marks]

  6. WHO’s Constitution defines health as more than the absence of disease. Explain how this definition widens the range of work the agency takes up, giving two examples of such work. [4 marks]

  7. Describe the functions of UNESCO in the field of education. [5 marks]

  8. ‘These agencies can supply, fund, train and advise, but they cannot compel.’ Explain this statement with reference to the functions of any two agencies studied in this chapter, and state what each of them still depends on a national government to provide. [6 marks]

14.11 Show Your Skills

  1. Study the emblem described below and answer the questions that follow. The emblem shows a globe marked with lines of latitude and longitude. In front of it stands the silhouette of a mother holding a small child. The whole design is framed by two olive branches.
    1. Name the organisation whose emblem this is, and state where its headquarters is located. [2 marks]
    2. What do the olive branches and the position of the mother and child each tell you about the organisation? [2 marks]
    3. Mention any two functions of this organisation in the fields of water and education. [2 marks]
  2. Read the extract and answer the questions that follow. “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
    1. Name the organisation whose founding document contains this sentence, and state that organisation’s stated objective. [2 marks]
    2. State two kinds of work this definition obliges the organisation to take up that a narrower definition would have left out. [2 marks]
    3. This sentence states an aim. Name one thing it cannot tell you about health in any country. [2 marks]
  3. Study the situation and answer the questions that follow. In a rural block, the only drinking-water source is contaminated. Young children are repeatedly ill with diarrhoea, and many of them have stopped attending the local school. The district administration writes to the state government for help, and asks whether any international assistance can be obtained.
    1. Name the agency whose functions cover clean water, sanitation and the welfare of these children, and state two forms its assistance could take. [2 marks]
    2. Name one inexpensive treatment for the dehydration caused by diarrhoea, and explain how the agencies helped make it widely available. [2 marks]
    3. Even if all three agencies were involved, one thing would still have to be supplied by the government. State what that is, and why. [2 marks]