MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 82 of 100

Correct — option (1), the International Labour Organization. The ILO was founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, its constitution forming Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, and it therefore completed a hundred years in 2019. That centenary was a substantial international event rather than a date on a calendar: the International Labour Conference met for its 108th session in June 2019 and adopted the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work, and the year's work was built on the report of the Global Commission on the Future of Work, which recommended among other things a universal labour guarantee, social protection from birth to old age and an entitlement to lifelong learning. The organisation is the oldest of the bodies now attached to the United Nations and the first to be brought into the UN system as a specialised agency, in 1946, having survived the League that created it. Two features of the ILO are worth holding because questions are repeatedly built on them. The first is its tripartite structure, unique in the UN system: each member State is represented not by governments alone but by two government delegates, one employers' delegate and one workers' delegate, each of the last two entitled to speak and vote independently of their own government. The second is the character of its output — international labour standards adopted as Conventions, which bind the States that ratify them, and Recommendations, which guide without binding; the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work classified eight of the Conventions as fundamental, and the 110th session of the International Labour Conference in June 2022 — two months before this paper was written — amended the Declaration to add a fifth category, a safe and healthy working environment, so that the fundamental Conventions now number ten, Nos. 155 and 187 having joined them, covering freedom of association and collective bargaining, the abolition of forced labour, the abolition of child labour, and the elimination of discrimination in employment. The ILO is headquartered at Geneva, it received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969 in its fiftieth year, and India has been a member from its foundation in 1919. Of the four bodies offered, it is the one whose hundredth anniversary was a live international event, and option (1) is the answer.

• (2)Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) — The FAO belongs to the post-war generation of agencies, not to the League of Nations generation. It was founded on 16 October 1945 at a conference in Quebec City, and that founding date is the reason 16 October is observed each year as World Food Day. It is headquartered in Rome, its mandate is to defeat hunger and to improve nutrition, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and it is the body behind the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report and the Codex Alimentarius food standards maintained jointly with the WHO. Counting from 1945, the FAO's own centenary is still some way off, and in 2022 it had completed rather more than seventy-five years. The useful discipline behind this option is to fix the founding years of the principal agencies as a short list — ILO 1919, FAO 1945, UNESCO 1945, WHO 1948 — because commissions test them in exactly this substitutable way.
• (3)World Health Organisation (WHO) — The WHO is younger still. It was agreed at the International Health Conference held in New York in 1946, and its constitution came into force on 7 April 1948, which is why 7 April is observed every year as World Health Day. It is headquartered at Geneva, its governing body is the World Health Assembly, and it is the agency behind the International Health Regulations, the declaration of a public health emergency of international concern, and the eradication of smallpox certified in 1980. In 2022 the organisation had completed rather less than seventy-five years, so it cannot answer a question about a hundred-year anniversary. It is worth noting that the paper prints the name with an s, as World Health Organisation, while the organisation's own name is spelt with a z; the same question prints the other two organisations with the z, so the inconsistency is the printer's and not a signal about the answer.
• (4)Universal Postal Union (UPU) — The Universal Postal Union is the one option that is older than the keyed answer rather than younger, and it is included precisely to catch a candidate who is guessing by age. It was established in 1874 by the Treaty of Bern as the General Postal Union, took its present name in 1878, and is among the oldest surviving intergovernmental organisations; it operated independently for three-quarters of a century and became a specialised agency of the United Nations only in 1948. Its hundredth year therefore fell in 1974, a full generation before this paper, and by 2022 it was approaching a hundred and fifty. The question is asking about the agency whose centenary was a matter of contemporary record, and that is the International Labour Organization, whose hundred years were completed in 2019 and marked by the Centenary Declaration; the UPU's antiquity is a fact worth knowing in its own right — it is headquartered at Bern and coordinates postal policy among its member States — but it does not answer this question.

The specialised agencies are autonomous international organisations linked to the United Nations by agreement rather than departments of it, each with its own membership, budget, governing conference and constitution. Because they were founded at different moments and for different purposes, their dates form a small chronology that examiners find convenient. The oldest of them predate the United Nations altogether: the Universal Postal Union of 1874 and the International Telecommunication Union, whose ancestor dates from 1865, were nineteenth-century unions of States created to solve practical problems of cross-border traffic, and were absorbed into the UN system in the late 1940s. The International Labour Organization belongs to the next layer, created in 1919 alongside the League of Nations by Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, on the argument written into its constitution that universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice. It outlived the League, was the first body brought into the new United Nations system as a specialised agency in 1946, and reached its centenary in 2019 with the adoption of the Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work. The third layer is the post-war creation of 1945 to 1948 — the FAO in 1945, UNESCO in 1945, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund from the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, and the WHO whose constitution entered into force in 1948. Knowing which layer an agency belongs to answers most questions that can be asked about its age.

International organisations are a standing element of the current-affairs and polity sections of MPSC papers, and they are tested in a narrow set of ways: the year and place of founding, the headquarters, the head of the organisation, the flagship report, and the anniversary or award of the year. This question is the anniversary form, and it rewards a candidate who keeps founding years rather than one who follows the news closely, because the event being referred to — the ILO's centenary — had occurred three years before the paper was written. That is a useful signal about the Commission's idea of current affairs: it is not restricted to the previous twelve months, and a fact that entered the general knowledge stock a few years earlier remains fair game. The efficient preparation is a single table of the specialised agencies with columns for the year of establishment, the headquarters city, the annual report or index most associated with the body, and the observance day it owns — World Food Day on 16 October for the FAO, World Health Day on 7 April for the WHO. Such a table also protects against the trap built into this item, where one option is older than the correct answer rather than younger.

• The International Labour Organization was founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, its constitution forming Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, and it completed a hundred years in 2019.
• The ILO's centenary was marked at the 108th session of the International Labour Conference in June 2019 with the adoption of the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work, following the report of the Global Commission on the Future of Work.
• The ILO is uniquely tripartite: governments, employers and workers are separately represented, with employers' and workers' delegates voting independently of their governments; it is headquartered at Geneva and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969.
• The ILO was the first body brought into the United Nations system as a specialised agency, in 1946, having been created by and survived the League of Nations; India has been a member since 1919.
• The other options belong to different periods — the FAO was founded on 16 October 1945, the WHO's constitution came into force on 7 April 1948, and the Universal Postal Union dates from 1874 under the Treaty of Bern, becoming a UN specialised agency only in 1948.

• Assuming the oldest organisation on the list must be the answer; the Universal Postal Union of 1874 is older than the ILO and its centenary fell as long ago as 1974
• Dating the WHO from the 1946 International Health Conference rather than from 7 April 1948, when its constitution entered into force and which is the date World Health Day marks
• Treating current affairs as the previous twelve months only, when a commission will test an anniversary that fell three or four years before the paper
• Confusing the ILO's tripartite representation with the ordinary one-State-one-delegation pattern of other agencies, which is the feature most often examined about it

International organisations appear in MPSC papers as single-fact questions rather than as analysis: name the founding year, name the headquarters, name the head, name the report, or identify which body is responsible for a named index or declaration. The anniversary form used here recurs whenever a round-numbered year is available, and it is usually set two to four years after the anniversary itself, which is why a candidate who prepares only the last twelve months of news is regularly caught. Questions on the ILO in particular tend to fasten on three things — the 1919 founding under the Treaty of Versailles, the tripartite structure, and the Conventions, especially those concerning child labour and forced labour — so a candidate who holds those three can usually answer whatever is asked. It is also worth preparing the agencies in contrast rather than singly, since the distractors in this format are almost always drawn from the same family.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is the distinctive feature of the International Labour Organization within the United Nations system ?

  • (a)It is the only agency whose decisions bind member States automatically without ratification
  • (b)It has a tripartite structure in which governments, employers and workers are separately represented
  • (c)It is the only agency headquartered outside Europe
  • (d)Its membership is confined to the members of the Security Council and their nominees

  Answer(b) It has a tripartite structure in which governments, employers and workers are separately represented. Each member State sends two government delegates, one employers' delegate and one workers' delegate to the International Labour Conference, and the employers' and workers' delegates may speak and vote independently of their own government, which is a feature no other body in the UN system shares. The ILO's Conventions bind only those States that ratify them, so option (1) misstates their effect, and the organisation is headquartered at Geneva.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Match the organisation with the year of its establishment : (a) Food and Agriculture Organization (b) World Health Organization (c) International Labour Organization (d) Universal Postal Union

  • (a)(a) 1945, (b) 1948, (c) 1919, (d) 1874
  • (b)(a) 1948, (b) 1945, (c) 1874, (d) 1919
  • (c)(a) 1919, (b) 1874, (c) 1945, (d) 1948
  • (d)(a) 1874, (b) 1919, (c) 1948, (d) 1945

  Answer(a) (a) 1945, (b) 1948, (c) 1919, (d) 1874. The FAO was founded on 16 October 1945 at Quebec City, which is why 16 October is World Food Day; the WHO's constitution entered into force on 7 April 1948, marked as World Health Day; the ILO was created in 1919 under the League of Nations by Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles; and the Universal Postal Union was established in 1874 by the Treaty of Bern, becoming a UN specialised agency only in 1948.