Economic and Social Council

Resumed Eighteenth Session

The eighteenth session of the Economic and Social Council was resumed at United Nations Headquarters with the Council's 831st meeting, on November 5, 1954, and concluded with its 834th meeting, on December 16, 1954. The Council decided on its basic program of work for 1955, and discussed the provisional agenda for its nineteenth session drawn up by the Secretary- General (Hammarskjold). Resolutions of the ninth session of the General Assembly referred to ECOSOC were dealt with as follows: 1) the General Assembly's request that the Commission on Human Rights complete its recommendations concerning international respect for the right of peoples and nations to self-determination was transmitted to that commission; 2) the question of establishing a world food reserve was entered in the provisional agenda of the Council's twentieth session; and 3) the Council heard a statement from the Secretariat that a report on the item ”international tax problems” would not be ready before 1956. The Council debated the question of re-establishing its discontinued Economic, Employment and Development Commission, and the possible terms of reference to be given it in the event that it should be re-established; without putting to a vote a draft resolution submitted jointly by the United States, United Kingdom, and Ecuador, under the terms of which the Council would decide not to re-establish the commission, the Council adopted by a vote of 9 to 8 with 1 abstention a Norwegian draft resolution under which consideration of the entire matter would be deferred until the Council's resumed twentieth session.