League of Nations - Working for a better world

What the League of Nations did to make the world a better place

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  • Created by: Lollipop
  • Created on: 06-06-12 13:25

Improving the world

  • The League of Nations had set itself a wider task than settling disputes
  • Through commissions and committees it aimed to fight poverty, disease and injustice in the world
  • It did this through: refugees, working conditions, health, transport and social problems
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Refugees

  • The League did a lot of work in getting refugees and former prisoners of war back to their homelands
  • They sent an estimated 400,000 prisoners back to there home after the war
  • When a refugee crisis hit Turkey in 1922, hundred of thousands of people had to be housed in camps and the League acted quickly to stamp out cholera, smallpox and dysentery in these camps
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Working Conditions

  • The International Labour Organisation was successful in banning poisonous lead from paint and limiting the hours a small child could work for
  • It also campaigned for employers to improve working conditions generally
  • It introduced a maximum 48 hour week and an 8 hour day but only some members adopted this as they thought it would raise industrial costs
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Health

  • The Health Committee worked hard to defeat the dreaded disease leprosy
  • It started global campaigns to exterminate mosquitoes which greatly reduced malaria and yellow fever
  • Even the USSR who were opposed to the League of Nations took there advice on preventing the plague in Siberia
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Transport

  • The League of Nations made recommendations on marking shipping lanes and produced an international highway code for road users
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Social Problems

  • The League blacklisted four large German, Dutch, French and Swiss companies which were involved in illegal drug trade
  • It brought the freeing of over 200,000 slaves in British owned Sierra Leone and organised raids against slave owners and traders in Burma
  • It challenged the use of forced labour to build a railway in Africa where the death rate among the African workers was 50% and brought the figure down to 4% which is much more acceptable
  • Even in areas where it couldn't remove social injustice the League kept records of what was going on and provided information on problems such as drug trafficking and slavery
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