1 janv. 1920 - LON Comissions

Description:

Refugee Organisation:

- Fridtjof Nansen (Norwegian scientist) helped find a solution for refugees after the Turkish War of Independence
- Helped 450,000 people find new homes from 1920 to 1922
- found new ways of transport, set up camps, settlements
- He and his staff worked with the Red Cross
- Nansen passport, allowed and gave the right for people to be moved from country to country

Health Organisation:

- Possibly one of the most successful agencies
- Had links with countries that weren’t members of the league (e.g.: USSR, USA, Germany) because disease knows no boundaries/doesn’t care about borders and allies, etc. So the League did good by thinking of/doing this!
- It provided technical assistance, information service, and advice on public health matters
- Helped out Siberia with typhus by educating health + sanitation
- Helped reduce leprosy and began an international campaign to annihilate mosquitoes (prevent malaria + yellow fever etc.).
- The success of this agency was shown when it became the World Health Org. (after LON fell apart)

Economic and Financial aid organization:

- After ww1 countries were economically damaged
- E.g.: Austria was in danger as it tried to adjust to its new status (a small landlocked country that is dependent on agriculture for wealth) (it used to be Austro-Hungary)
- In 1922, League devised a plan for expenditure + inevitably reduced revenues
- Controlled currency by controlling levels of interest, circulation of bank notes + issuing of credit
- Also gave Austria a substantial loan
- Trade revived, unemployment rates fell, budget balanced
- Other examples include: Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary (bc Austro-Hungary)

International Labor Organisation:

- 1920s, under the direction of Albert Thomas
- Achieved some success in enforcing a general improvement in working conditions
- Tried to persuade governments to take action by giving recommendations
- E.g. of recommendations: 8-hour working day, 48-hour working week, annual holidays (with pay), the right to join trade unions, + min. Employment age
- information on safety in the workplace (e.g.: white lead in print manufacturing was dangerous)
- not everyone accepted the recommendations
- E.g. of not accepting: the minimum employment age was 15 but in Britain the school leaving age wasn’t that old until after WW2
- But the ILO popularized new benchmarks that would be hard to ignore (regarding working hours, minimum wage, sickness + unemployment insurance, pensions)

Slavery Commission:

- The main focus were on getting rid of slavery + slave dealing, along with forced prostitution (young women/children)
- Freed 200,000 slaves in Sierra Leone and reduced of death rate for African workers on the Tanganyika railway from 50% (so many!)
- Some countries just abolished slavery (e.g.: Iraq, Jordan, Nepal)
- Despite all this, there was not a lot of success,
- “White slave” traffic remains an issue to this day, even in more advanced countries

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