International Institutions: WHO, UNESCO, IMO and other agencies

The International Telecommunication Union is the oldest. It was founded in Paris on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Union, when twenty States signed the first International Telegraph Convention to connect national telegraph networks. It took its present name after the Madrid conference of 1932, which merged the telegraph and radiotelegraph conventions, and became a UN specialised agency in 1949. The Universal Postal Union comes next: it was created by the Treaty of Bern in 1874, took its present name in 1878 and became a specialised agency in 1948. The ILO dates from 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles, and ICAO from the Chicago Convention of 1944. So all four predate the UN except ICAO, which was created during the war, and ITU predates the UN by eighty years. India's M.B. Sarwate served as ITU Secretary-General in the 1960s.

The G4 consists of Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, which support one another's bids for permanent seats in an enlarged Council and issue joint statements at the margins of the General Assembly. South Africa is not a G4 member; Africa's claim is pursued collectively through the African Union's Ezulwini Consensus, which asks for two permanent and five non-permanent seats for the continent without naming the countries.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. Article 57 describes specialised agencies as bodies 'established by intergovernmental agreement' with wide international responsibilities, which are to be brought into relationship with the UN. Article 63 gives ECOSOC the power to enter into those relationship agreements, 'subject to approval by the General Assembly', and to coordinate the agencies' activities through consultation and recommendations. Under Article 17(3) the Assembly considers and approves financial arrangements with the agencies and examines their administrative budgets 'with a view to making recommendations'. Statement 3 is wrong. Specialised agencies are autonomous organisations with their own constitutions, member States, governing bodies and budgets; that is why the membership of, say, the ILO or WHO is not identical to UN membership. ECOSOC coordinates them but does not command them, unlike its own subsidiary bodies such as the functional and regional commissions.

Three. The SOFI report is jointly prepared and published by five UN entities: FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP) and WHO. FAO leads the preparation, and the report is released each year with the names of all five heads of agency on its foreword, which is why it is cited as a joint UN product rather than an FAO report alone. Each edition gives the headline estimate of the number of undernourished people in the world and tracks progress on SDG Targets 2.1 (ending hunger and food insecurity) and 2.2 (ending malnutrition), using measures such as the prevalence of undernourishment and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale. Recent editions have taken one theme each, such as financing to end hunger (2024), high food price inflation (2025) and the high cost of a healthy diet (2026). UNDP is not a co- publisher; its flagship report is the Human Development Report. The mix of agencies reflects the report's scope, since nutrition involves children's health and health systems, not just food supply.

Only one. The UN System Chart (March 2025) lists fifteen specialised agencies: FAO, ICAO, IFAD, ILO, IMF, IMO, ITU, UNESCO, UNIDO, UN Tourism, UPU, WHO, WIPO, WMO and the World Bank Group. UNIDO became one in 1985. The other three are listed separately as related organisations, alongside the CTBTO Preparatory Commission, the International Criminal Court, the International Seabed Authority, ITLOS and the OPCW. The IAEA reports to the General Assembly and, on security matters, to the Security Council, but it is not a specialised agency under Articles 57 and 63. The WTO has cooperation arrangements with the UN but is a separate organisation created by the Marrakesh Agreement. The IOM joined the UN system as a related organisation in 2016. The distinction matters because specialised agencies have formal relationship agreements with ECOSOC under Article 63, while related organisations have their own looser arrangements.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. The ILO was created in 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles, set up its office in Geneva in 1920 under its first Director, Albert Thomas, and survived the League of Nations to become a UN specialised agency in 1946. The Declaration of Philadelphia, adopted in 1944 and later annexed to the ILO Constitution, restated its aims and opens with the principle that 'labour is not a commodity'. Statement 3 is wrong because the ILO is tripartite. Under Articles 3 and 4 of its Constitution, each member State sends four delegates to the Conference, two from the government and one each representing employers and workers, and every delegate is entitled to vote individually. This is why the Conference can adopt conventions such as No. 138 (minimum age) and No. 182 (worst forms of child labour), both ratified by India in June 2017, with the votes of workers and employers counted alongside governments. The ILO received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. The United States has left UNESCO three times. The Reagan administration announced its withdrawal at the end of 1983, effective December 1984, and the country stayed out for nearly two decades before rejoining in 2003. In October 2017 it announced a second withdrawal, which took effect at the end of 2018; Israel left at the same time. On 10 July 2023 the United States deposited its acceptance of the UNESCO Constitution again and became, in UNESCO's words, its 194th Member State. Statement 3 is wrong. On 22 July 2025 the United States notified the Director-General of a third withdrawal, but under Article II(6) of the UNESCO Constitution a withdrawal takes effect only on 31 December of the year following notification, so the United States remains a full member until 31 December 2026 (status as of October 2026). The pattern shows that a specialised agency's membership is separate from UN membership: a State can stay in the UN and leave an agency.

The World Meteorological Organization succeeded the International Meteorological Organization (IMO), a non-governmental body of national weather service directors created in 1873 to coordinate weather observations across borders. The WMO Convention entered into force on 23 March 1950, a date now marked as World Meteorological Day; the WMO began operating in 1951 as the IMO's successor and became a UN specialised agency the same year, with its seat in Geneva. The abbreviation creates a trap: today 'IMO' usually means the International Maritime Organization in London, created by a 1948 convention that came into force in 1958, which has nothing to do with the 1873 body. The UPU (1874) and ITU (1865) were intergovernmental from the start, created by treaties between States, so neither succeeded a non-governmental body. The WMO's change from a club of weather services to a treaty organisation of States is exactly what the question tests.