UN General Assembly
1947

What has the United Nations contributed to the required solution? I fear it cannot be said that the Economic and Social Council has yet come to grips with the substance of the world’s economic and social problems. It is an extraordinary fact that the Council has not yet made, or caused to be made, a general review of the current world economic situation. It has dealt at length — and I must say, successfully — with procedural and organizational matters, but a definite priority for urgent matters of substance has yet to be determined so that the Council can assume a corporate initiative in dealing with the main economic problems of the world. Let us take a striking example: so far as the Council has considered the economic crisis that now grips Europe, the result has been to produce machinery — the Economic Commission for Europe — and the main achievement of that machinery has been to absorb other machinery.