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FESYP European federation of associations of the particleboard manufacturers (founded in 1958)
The League of Nations consisted of an Assembly and a Council both assisted by a Permanent Secretariat, which was the technical organ of the League of Nations. Appointed and headed by the Secretary-General, the Secretariat was set up in Geneva, at the seat of the League of Nations, first in the Palais Wilson and later in the Palais des Nations.
The Permanent Secretariat represented the civil service of the League of Nations and was, in practice, the only direct producer of archives. These owe their origin to actions taken by the Assembly, the Council, the various commissions, committees and specialized bodies, as well as to the work of the Secretariat. The latter was the servant of these various entities and was itself responsible for administering certain matters.
The Permanent Secretariat was the executive organ of the League of Nations in charge of:
assisting the Assembly and the Council, as well as their committees and commissions, and conferences, in the preparation of their work and the implementation of their decisions, resolutions and all official acts, as well as in the participation of surveys on technical subjects;
carrying out administrative and financial work;
the registration and publication of the Treaties ratified between Member States;
material and technical work, such as translation of speeches, discussions and documents, writing and reproduction of minutes, reports, distribution and mailing of documents;
documentation (statistical collection, information documents, studies on various subjects, etc.);
dissemination of information: especially to inform the staff through press releases and peoples throughout the world about actions taken by the League of Nations. This was accomplished through the production of books, pamphlets, periodical publications, press and radio broadcasts.
The staff of the Secretariat:
The work of the different Sections of the Secretariat was done by international officials, who enjoyed diplomatic privileges and immunities and were expected to remain neutral towards their own governments. In 1920, the staff counted 158 civil servants and in 1931 there were 707 civil servants.
Administratively, the Secretariat consisted of the offices of the Secretary-general, the Deputy Secretaries-general and Under-Secretaries-general, various sections and administrative services, auxiliary offices in different countries, and a library.
Three Secretaries-general were successively at the head of the Secretariat:
The fonds of the Secretariat:
The fonds of the Secretariat should be considered as a whole. The different sections used in the "Répertoire général" of 1969 were set up to better understand the work of the Secretariat.
From 1920 to 1939, the classification system of the different sections of the League of Nations Secretariat remained more or less the same. However, a major change occurred in 1939-1940, when the different sections and services of the League of Nations Secretariat were merged into three departments:
Department I (or Department of General Affairs) included the former Political Section, Minorities Section, Mandates Section, Disarmament Section and Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureaux Section. The latter section was transferred to Department III in 1940;
Department II was composed of the Economic and Financial Section as well as the Transit Section;
Department III included the former Health, Social Questions and Opium Traffic Sections and also the Intellectual Cooperation and International Bureaux Section that was transferred, in 1940, from Department I to this Department.
Each department was headed by a Director.
A distinction must be made in the archives between two basic categories: on the one hand, the Secretariat archive group (greater in volume than all the rest put together), and on the other the various archive groups of external origin. The Secretariat constituted files and kept registers. At the same time, the institutions set up by the League of Nations or under its auspices in various parts of the world were also day-by-day drafting and storing documents of every kind, the "Commission files".
Therefore are considered as archive groups "of external origin" all the groups of files constituted outside the Secretariat (whose headquarters, it must be recalled, never left Geneva) by more or less autonomous bodies established by the League of Nations, such as the Administrative Commissions or units directly responsible to the Secretariat such as the branch offices to fulfill some administration or arbitrary obligations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.
With the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the dissolution and the liquidation of the League of Nations in 1946, the League of Nations Headquarters in Geneva, the Palais des Nations, became the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG).
However, this official name has changed many times before being formally established:
- from August 1946 to April 1947 : "United Nations Geneva Office" (in French "Bureau de Genève" Circulaire d'Information du Bureau de Genève, Doc. IC/Genève/1);
- from April 1947 to August 1948: "European Office of the United Nations" (in French "Office Européen des Nations Unies");
- from August 1948 to August 1949: "United Nations Office at Geneva" (in French " Office des Nations Unies à Genève") (IC/Geneva 152)
- from August 1949 to January 1966: "European Office of the United Nations", (in French "Office Européen des Nations Unies") (SGB/82/Rev. 1)
- from 1 February 1966, "United Nations Office at Geneva", (in French "Office des Nations Unies à Genève") (ST/SGB/128/Corr. 1 du 9 fév. 1966) Main Functions
The main functions of UNOG, as defined from 1946 to 1973, can be summarized as follows:
These functions developped with the different reorganisations.
In 1966, the UNOG got new functions. Among them :
When the problem of the financial reconstruction of Hungary arose in 1923, it was dealt with in a similar way as in Austria. The financial reconstruction of Hungary started more or less one year after the financial reconstruction of Austria.
Once more the Council of the League of Nations and its advisory body, the Financial Committee were concerned with analysing Europe's post-war financial disorder, and studying and carrying out plans of financial recovery. This Financial Committee, which depended on the Economic and Financial Section, was founded at the Brussels International Financial Conference of 1920 organized to solve the problem of the world financial crisis.
An American Commissioner General was appointed in Budapest, and within one year, the Hungarian budget showed a credit balance. Ten million pounds sterling was loaned to the country by the League of Nations. The office of the Commissioner General ended its work in 1926 and the Loan Control Committee (reconstruction loan: Loan Trustee Service) was maintained until 1929, as it was in Vienna.
Although the financial reconstruction of Hungary was simpler than that of Austria, the world depression, which began in 1929, has naturally compromised it.