Trust territory
Trustee areas were former mandate areas of the League of Nations , which were handed over to fiduciary administration by the United Nations (UN) trustee powers after the League of Nations was dissolved in 1946 . In addition, there were the Italian colonies in North and East Africa until World War II.
In addition to securing world peace, the trust system, according to the Charter of the United Nations (Chapter XII), should above all serve to promote these mostly underdeveloped areas and their gradual development until they become independent. This process was overseen by the UN Trusteeship Council, one of its six organs made up of the five permanent members of the Security Council .
The trustee council was suspended on November 1, 1994, as it had previously ceased its work after the last trustee area (Palau) was given independence in 1994.
The UN trust system comprised a total of twelve trust areas. By 1994 all had joined or given independence to a neighboring independent state:
- The former Italian colony of Libya , administered by France and Great Britain since 1947, became an independent kingdom on January 1, 1952.
- After a brief British administration, the former Italian colony of Eritrea was united with Ethiopia in a federation in 1952 as the province of Eritrea .
- British Togoland joined the Gold Coast to form Ghana in 1957 , which became a UN member in 1959.
- French Togoland gained independence as Togo in 1960 .
- French Cameroon gained independence as Cameroon in 1960 . A year later, the south joined British Cameroon , while the British-administered north integrated into Nigeria .
- The Italian Trustee Territory of Somalia , for which Italy had assumed trusteeship, merged with the former colony of British Somaliland to form Somalia in 1960 .
- The British trusteeship area Tanganyika in East Africa gained independence in 1961 and constituted itself in 1962 as the Republic of Tanganyika . After the union with the coastal islands of Zanzibar and Pemba ( People's Republic of Zanzibar ) in 1964, the state operates to the present day under the formal name of United Republic of Tanzania , in short Tanzania .
- Rwanda-Urundi , with Belgium as a trustee, split in 1962 into the independent states of Rwanda and Burundi .
- The northeastern part of New Guinea , administered by Australia , became independent as Papua New Guinea in 1975 , together with the Australian territory of Papua in the southeast of the island .
- Samoa gained independence from the oceanic islands in 1962 and Nauru in 1968.
- Most recently, the United States released its Pacific Islands trust territory into independence ( Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia in 1990 , Palau in 1994 ).
- South West Africa did not become independent under international law as Namibia until 1990 , although the UN had already withdrawn South Africa in 1966 the mandate still granted by the League of Nations over the former German South West Africa .
Web links
- Literature on the subject of trust territory in the catalog of the German National Library