League of Nations Agencies: Achievements and Challenges

League of Nations Agencies: A Better World?

Health Committee

Aims

Address dangerous diseases and educate people about health and sanitation. Collect statistical information, spread new ideas, and develop programs to combat illness.

Achievements

• Collected statistical information and spread best practices.
• Sponsored research into infectious diseases.
• Developed vaccines and medicines against deadly diseases.
• Launched a global campaign to exterminate mosquitoes, reducing cases of malaria and yellow fever.
• Worked to prevent plague outbreaks.

Obstacles

None specified.

International Labor Organization

Aims

• Improve working conditions.
• Persuade member countries to adopt suggestions.

Achievements

• Banned poisonous white lead from paint.
• Limited the working hours of young children.

Obstacles

• Lack of funds.
• Could only "name and shame" countries or organizations that broke rules.
• Minority of members adopted it, fearing increased industrial costs.

Mandate Commission

Aims

• Report to the League on the treatment of people in mandated territories.
• Ensure France and Britain acted in the best interests of the people in those territories, not their own.

Achievements

Protected the welfare of minority groups.

Obstacles

Lacked the power to enforce its will on mandatory powers like Britain or France.

Slavery Commission

Aims

Abolish slavery worldwide.

Achievements

• Freed 200,000 slaves in British-owned Sierra Leone.
• Organized raids against slave owners.

Obstacles

Many workers were treated like slaves, even though they were not technically classified as such.

Refugee Committee

Aims

• Return refugees to their homes.
• Help refugees settle and find work.

Achievements

• Introduced the "Nansen Passport" to facilitate refugee travel and repatriation.
• Returned 400,000 prisoners to their homes.
• Housed thousands of people in refugee camps and acted quickly to control outbreaks of cholera, smallpox, and dysentery.

Obstacles

• Short on funds.
• Declining authority of the League in the 1930s due to increasing international tensions.