Selected legal opinions of the Secretariat of the United Nations and related inter-governmental organizations

International humanitarian law is increasingly perceived as part of human rights law applicable in armed conflict. This trend can be traced back to the United Nations Human Rights Conference held in Tehran in 1968 which not only encouraged the development of humanitarian law itself, but also marked the beginning of a growing use by the United Nations of humanitarian law during its examination of the human rights situation in certain countries or during its thematic studies. The greater awareness of the relevance of humanitarian law to the protection of people in armed conflict, coupled with the increasing use of human rights law in international affairs, means that both these areas of law now have a much greater international profile and are regularly being used together in the work of both international and non-governmental organizations.

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The Indian Nationalist Movement and the League of Nations: Prologue to the United Nations

India Quarterly A Journal of International Affairs ◽

10.1177/097492848303900303 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 39 (3) ◽

pp. 281-298 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

T.A. Keenleyside

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

United Nations ◽

League Of Nations ◽

Governmental Organizations ◽

Non Governmental Organizations ◽

The World ◽

The United Nations ◽

Governmental Institutions ◽

British Commonwealth ◽

The Impact

Prior to 1947, India, despite its dependence upon Great Britain, was represented in most of the bonafide international conferences and organizations that evolved especially during the inter-war years. For example, India participated in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Washington Conference on Naval Armaments of 1921, the London Naval Conference of 1930, the Disarmament Conference of 1932 and the annual inter-war conferences of the International Labour Organization. In addition, India was represented in two important international organizations of the inter-war period—the British Commonwealth, in whose deliberations it was included from 1917 onwards and the League of Nations, of which it was a founding member. For a variety of reasons; Indians involved in the independence movement disassociated themselves from and were critical of official Indian diplomacy conducted through the major international conferences and institutions of the world community and tended to attach greater importance to those non-governmental organizations in which the voice of nationalist India could be fully heard—that is to the deliberations of such bodies as the League Against Imperialism, 1927–1930, the Anti-War Congress of 1932, the World Peace Congress of 1936 and the International Peace Campaign Conference of 1938. Nevertheless, despite the nationalist antipathy for official Indian diplomacy, an examination of such governmental institutions as the League of Nations from the perspective of nationalist India is still important in order to understand some aspects of independent India's foreign policy and more specifically its approach to international organization. Further, even though Indian delegations to the League were unrepresentative, there were subtle ways in which they reflected national Indian opinions and exhibited specifically Indian traits, so that a study of the official Indian role is useful in drawing attention to what were to prove to be some of the earliest and most persisting elements of independent Indian diplomacy via such bodies as the United Nations. It is thus the purpose of this article first to explore nationalist Indian attitudes towards the League (especially the reasons for opposition to the organization), second to analyze the extent to which the official Indian role in the League reflected nationalist Indian concerns, and third to comment upon the impact of the League of Nations on independent India's foreign policy, especially its role in the United Nations.

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