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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 1, 2 January 1950, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The more honest spokesmen for the United Nations, who admit its failures in international politics, try to balance against these decisive failures the successes scored by the UN in the social and economic fields. Such a spokesman, for example, is Mrs. Roosevelt.
It is enlightening, therefore, to study a report of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund on the third anniversary of its functioning. This fund has been engaged in providing relief to the desperately needy children of this war-torn world, of whom there are 60 millions that have been counted.
They might be said to constitute a nation of little people, all sick, hungry, improperly clothed, inadequately sheltered – a population greater than Britain’s or France’s or Italy’s. This nation of international misery has been the field of activity of the Children’s Emergency Fund for the past three years. What has been done?
The fund’s survey, made for the New York Times, shows that food to supplement inadequate meals has gone to only six million children. Thus only one out of every ten children requiring such aid has received some milk and possibly a small portion of meat, fish or fat. Even a smaller number of boys and girls throughout the world have been given shoes and/or other articles of clothing.
These fortunate ones number only two million, or a mere four per cent of all the underclothed youngsters. The group benefited by medical aid is larger, amounting to 20 million, but still only one-third of the total suffering from ill health or threatened by disease. Besides, one must remember that with only six million children receiving supplementary food and only two million getting some clothing, sickness must recur among the 20 million who may get medical attention.
This showing can hardly be considered an outstanding success – certainly not by the 54 million kids who are hungry, by the 58 million who need clothing, by the 40 million deprived of medical care.
Yet even this inadequate program is threatened with curtailment after 1950 when the fund must get a new financial transfusion from the General Assembly of the UN. The United States, which is the biggest contributor to the fund, has expressed reluctance to continue any program that will commit it to support “heavy feeding programs” for an indefinite period. England definitely wants to end feeding projects in most of Europe.
Russia’s attitude may be inferred from two incidents. Russia’s delegate abstained from voting on the proposition to draft a future program, not stating any reasons, and Russia’s satellite Rumania has summarily closed down the fund’s agency in Bucharest.
The report herein referred to makes clear how disastrous any curtailment of the fund will be. In Italy cessation of feeding for mothers and children will wipe out the small gains made. In Southern Italy 71 per cent of the youngsters examined were found in "bad or mediocre nutritional condition”; hospital services for children are woefully inadequate; there is a very high mortality rate among infants, especially among the more than 35,000 illegitimate babies born annually.
The situation in Greece, according to the report, will continue to be in an "emergency status for some years to come” and Greek children are in a desperate condition. There is an estimated total of 339,900 orphans who require immediate aid. There are thousands of crippled, blinded and war-maimed children.
In Germany the overcrowding has serious effects on children, especially on the three million homeless refugee children. The influx of these youngsters will create a problem for years. Furthermore, the health of the kids is undermined by poor milk supply, unsatisfactory fat content and unsafe pasteurization.
The above illustrates the insufficiencies still existing in Europe. There are also Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
For the million-masses in Asia, for example, no attempt has been made at direct feeding aid. but fund money is supposed to go for demonstrations to show the people the advantages of improved nutritional programs, also for organization of mother-and-child health services and health programs to reduce tuberculosis, malaria and venereal diseases. The training of local personnel is likewise urgent. But not even the surface has been scratched, while the need for such improvements in all the backward parts of the world remains.
No one will dispute that something is better than nothing; that it is better that two million children get some shoes and clothing than that none should have them; better that six million drink more milk than that none should do so; that 20 million benefit by some medical care than that all should go untended. But how can one content oneself with such reasoning when everyone knows that in this age of technological and scientific development there is no need for any man, woman or child to be deprived of adequate food, clothing, shelter or medical care – except the need imposed by the class governments that are the powers of the world?
Can the capitalist United States be expected to give adequate help so that the poor and miserable abroad may benefit from the technological and scientific marvels of today when in this country the domestic budget of some $44 billion allots three-fourths for military purposes and less than one-twentieth for so-called people’s welfare?
Or can Stalinist Russia be expected to help raise the standard of living of the world when it also maintains a military program and a bureaucracy that rest on the enslavement not only of the Russian masses but of the masses in the satellite countries?
Or can one perhaps put hope in the Labor government of England which still follows the dictates of imperialism and maintains a huge military machine while the people tighten their belts with “austerity”?
There are those who try to comfort themselves with the thought that a start has been made. Give the United Nations a chance, they say – Rome wasn’t built in a day; gradually more and more progress will be made.
The trouble is that “gradually” is not going to win the race with these military machines a-building. When these are ready for action, what will happen to the vaunted start that has been made? An atomic war will fix things so that the 60 million miserable children will probably no longer be in need of anything at all, either gradually or otherwise – as will more tens upon tens of millions of human beings be put beyond any needs at all.
Such minuscule social programs as that of the International Children’s Emergency Fund cannot be balanced against the UN failures in international politics because these failures spell atomic war and total destruction. The only activities that can possibly balance these failures would be those of the war-weary masses of people to replace their class governments by socialist governments of the people to work for peace, security and plenty for all.
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Last updated: 23 February 2023