How Important was the League’s Humanitarian Work?

• The First World War caused thousands of people to flee their homes to escape the conflict

• The conflict destroyed some areas

• Repatriate citizens, especially in the Balkans, Greece, Armenia and Turkey

• Improve standards in refugee camps

• 425,000 displaced people returned to their homes or their country

• Reduced the number of refugees dying from diseases like cholera

• The Refugee Committee lacked the funding it needed to resolve the refugee crisis

• The First World War showed how different healthcare was around the world

• The Spanish Flu (1918-1920) infected a third of the population and killed around 50 million people

• Eradicate dangerous diseases

• Educate the general public on hygiene

• Working with charities to increase disease prevention

• Created medical research projects and institutes

• Worked with non-League countries 

• Prevented a typhoid epidemic in the USSR

• Established research institutes in London, Copenhagen and Singapore

• Introduced vaccines for malaria and killed infected mosquitoes

• Work impacted due to the lack of funding in the Great Depression (1930s)

• Poor working standards across the world

• A rise in communism due to the unhappiness of workers

• Place limits on working hours

• Collect data and publish advice on working practices

• Improve health and safety in the workplace

• Banned poisonous lead paint

• The working week was restricted to 48 hours

• In 1928, 77 countries agreed to a minimum wage

• Collaborated with workers, trade union representatives and governments

• The ILO could only recommend, not make laws

• Countries rejected the ILO’s suggestions, for example banning children under 14 from working and the eight-hour working day

• European empires were not tackling the issues of slavery in their colonies, especially in East Africa

• Abolish slavery worldwide

• Freed 200,000 enslaved people in Sierra Leone

• Organised raids to disrupt Burmese slave traders

• Reduced the death rate of workers on the Tanganyika Railway from 50% to 4%

• No agreed procedures for reviewing slavery in the countries of member states

Article 2

The High Contracting Parties undertake, each in respect of the territories placed under its sovereignty, jurisdiction, protection, suzerainty or tutelage, so far as they have not already taken the necessary steps:

(a)To prevent and suppress the slave trade;

(b)To bring about, progressively and as soon as possible, the complete abolition of slavery in all its forms.

An extract from the League of Nations Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery (25th September 1926)