UN OPENS | My Dad Joins ICAO (Comment)

The two-month, April 25-June 26 Conference in San Fran-
cisco. My Dad was sent by FDR's Budget Bureau, but it
became Truman's when FDR died on April 12.

October 24–This day in 1945, the United Nations Charter came into effect.

It had been adopted and signed four months earlier, on June 26, 1945.

The U.N. was intended to be an improved version of League of Nations. The principles of the U.N. Charter originated in the San Francisco Conference, presided over by the Yalta powers - the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union.

It was attended by a huge international assembly -3,500 representatives of 50 nations, including nine continental European states, 21 North, Central, and South American republics, seven Middle Eastern states, five British Commonwealth nations, two Soviet republics in addition to the USSR, two East Asian nations, and three African states.

The conferees were determined to create a better organization than the League of Nations. The goal was create something to

save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,…to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights,…to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.

A feeling for the meeting is given by the BBC World Service,  which interviews Steve Schlesinger and others on the founding of the U.N. Negotiating and maintaining the peace was the practical responsibility of the new U.N. Security Council, composed of the United States, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China. Each would have veto power over the other.

One of the specialized agencies of the U.N. was the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO (properly pronounced ee-KAY-oh, says my brother Randal). My Dad, E. R. Marlin, became Director of Technical Assistance and by the mid-1960s of the 1,700 employees of ICAO, about 1,500 worked for the bureau that he headed.

Service cover sent by the UN Technical Assistance Board to E. R. Marlin,
Director, ICAO Technical Assistance Bureau. Postmark dated May 11, 1954.

ICAO’s Technical Co-operation Bureau was created to provide in-depth technological assistance to States with their aviation projects.

It supports ICAO’s Strategic Objectives - Aviation Safety, Air Navigation Capacity and Efficiency, Security and Facilitation, Environmental Protection, Sustainable and Economic Development of Air Transport.

It also contributes to the global and uniform implementation the International Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs).

The ICAO Technical Co-operation Program has been in operation since 1951. It has made valuable contributions to international civil aviation safety and growth and remains a permanent priority activity of ICAO.

Since its establishment in 1952, the Technical Assistance Bureau has implemented civil aviation projects with an accumulated value in excess of $2 billion. With an average annual progra size of more than $120 million, it is involved in approximately 250 projects each year with individual project budgets ranging from less than $20 ,000 to more than $120 million. To date, TCB has provided assistance to more than 115 countries, deploying annually approximately 1200 international and national experts.

E. R. ("Spike") Marlin was a Member of the Secretariat at the Conference on International Civil Aviation held in Chicago in 1944. He was one of the first Members of the PICAO Secretariat, and served with the Organization for 17 years. The first years of this period saw Marlin successively as Administrative Officer, Liaison Officer and External Relations Officer for ICAO. When the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance of the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies began, Marlin was assigned to direct ICAO's participation; he became the first Director of the Technical Assistance Bureau when this Office was created in November 1952.

Comment by Randal Marlin, My Brother (October 24, 2015)

The location of ICAO in Montreal was Dad's idea. I asked him once about this and he stated clearly stated this was so. He was internationalist in spirit [he wrote a League of Nations column for the Irish Times] and wanted the organization to work in at least a bilingual region. Dad understood the historical arrival of decolonization and wanted to prepare for it by training aviation personnel in less developed areas so that they would operate safe airports and aircraft. This was quite against the spirit of American exceptionalism and world domination that we find today among neoconservatives.

In Canada, we just had an election whereby a neoconservative government was replaced by a Liberal one. Most people are probably not aware that Canada was in danger of losing the headquarters of ICAO to some other country as a result of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's unwavering and uncritical support of the Israeli government of Netanyahu, despite its actions in the West Bank and Gaza. Arab and Muslim nations were looking for some way of showing their displeasure with Canada's policy and this was one possibility that was suggested.