TERRITORIES UNDER TRUSTEESHIP. – These are territories subject to a particular system of international government (trusteeship), implemented by the attribution of powers to a specific State by the United Nations. Trusteeship is connected with the mandate system, which it replaced: it must be understood within the trend toward the gradual abandonment of the old colonial systems and is governed by particular international law (chapters 12 and 13 of the Charter of the U. N.).
The principal purpose of the system is to promote the progress of the populations under administration and their preparation for self-government or independence; it is established by means of conventions between the States directly concerned and concerns, or may concern—excluding the territories of United Nations member States—territories: 1) formerly subject to the mandate system of the League of Nations (in practice, only type B and C mandates); 2) taken from enemy States as a consequence of the Second World War; 3) voluntarily placed under the system by the States administering them. A series of international controls is provided for the proper functioning of the system: these are exercised almost exclusively by United Nations organs: the General Assembly (for which the Security Council is substituted in the so-called strategic areas), the Trusteeship Council, and the Economic and Social Council; they are carried out by means of the so-called « questionnaire » addressed by the Trusteeship Council to the administering State and the latter’s related annual report; petitions from the populations under administration; and periodic visits to the territories by special commissions. Each application of the trusteeship system is essentially temporary, since it must end when the populations under administration attain self-government or independence; it may nevertheless be observed that nothing is explicitly established to this effect either by the Charter of the United Nations or—apart from one case to be discussed below—by the individual trusteeship agreements. To date, the following territories have been placed under trusteeship: British Cameroons, administering State Great Britain; French Cameroons, France; Pacific Islands, U.S.A.; Island of Nauru, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain; New Guinea, Australia; Ruanda-Urundi, Belgium; Western Samoa, New Zealand;
Somalia, Italy; Tanganyika, Great Britain, French Togoland, France, British Togoland, Great Britain.
The application of the trusteeship system to ex-Italian Somalia is distinguished by the following principal features: a) the exclusion of Italy from the drafting of the agreement, the latter being accompanied by a « Declaration of Constitutional Principles »; b) the creation of organs, such as the Advisory Council (composed of three States: Egypt, Colombia, and the Philippines), having substantial supervisory functions over the activity of the administering State; c) the temporary nature of the system: 10 years from the approval of the agreement by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Certain aspects of the system have raised important legal questions. Among others, mention must be made of the problems concerning the nature of trusteeship agreements and the so-called « territorial sovereignty ».
On the first point: trusteeship agreements submitted for approval to the General Assembly of the United Nations (and to the Security Council, as regards strategic areas) have been characterized in various ways. In summary, it may be said—emphasizing the relative nature of the terminology, which is understood in various ways even within the science of domestic law from which it is borrowed, and leaving aside the thesis that would identify an agreement whose parties would be formed not solely by the States concerned but, on the one hand, by the latter and, on the other, by the United Nations—that, in relation to the aforesaid approval, the agreement has been regarded as part of a complex act or as a conditional bi- or multilateral act.
On the second point: the discussions on territorial sovereignty raised in their time by the application of the League of Nations’ mandate system have been revived in connection with trusteeship administrations. Here too, noting that the solution varies according to the meaning assigned to the term « territorial sovereignty » and, in particular, according to whether or not it is understood to consist in a real right over the territory, the principal theories may be reduced to four. Attribution of sovereignty: 1) to the administering State (a theory connected—but not exclusively—with the denial that territorial sovereignty consists in a real right); 2) to the United Nations; 3) to the local populations (a theory connected with the conception of sovereignty as a real right and with the possibility of distinguishing within it an undam ius from an exercitium iuris, the former belonging to the populations, the latter to the administering State); 4) to the States which, having disposition of the territory, consent to its being placed under trusteeship.
The territories under trusteeship must be distinguished from the territories known as « non-self-governing ». This latter designation refers to all former colonial territories dependent on United Nations members without being placed under trusteeship. Chapter 11 of the Charter of the United Nations, entitled precisely « Declaration Regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories », establishes a series of obligations for the administering State—obligations that, according to part of the scholarship, are moral rather than legal. Finally, it should be noted that, according to unanimous opinion, the principles of chapter 11, owing to their general value, also apply to territories under trusteeship.