TRUST TERRITORIES. - These are territories subject to a particular system of international government (trusteeship), implemented by the attribution of powers to a given State by the United Nations. Trusteeship is linked to the mandates system, which it replaced: it, which must be framed within the tendency toward the gradual abandonment of the old colonialist systems, is governed by particular international law (chaps. 12 and 13 of the U.N. Charter).
The main purpose of the regime is to promote the progress of the administered populations and their advancement toward autonomy or independence; it is established by means of conventions between the States directly concerned and concerns or may concern - with the exclusion of the territories of member States of the United Nations - territories: 1) already subject to the mandates 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 subjected to the regime itself by the States that administer them. A series of international controls is provided for the regular operation of the system: they are exercised almost exclusively by the organs of the United Nations: the General Assembly (which is replaced by the Security Council for the so-called strategic areas), the Trusteeship Council, 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; the petitions of the administered populations; the periodic visits carried out in the territories by special commissions. Each application of the trusteeship regime is essentially temporary, since it must cease upon the attainment of autonomy or independence by the administered populations; it may however be observed that in this regard nothing is explicitly established either by the Charter of the United Nations or - except for one case which will be discussed below - by the individual trusteeship agreements. Up to today the following territories have been subjected to 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 Togo, France, British Togo, Great Britain.
The application of the trusteeship system to ex-Italian Somalia is distinguished by the following principal peculiarities: a) exclusion of Italy from the formation of the convention, the latter accompanied by a "Declaration of constitutional principles"; b) creation of organs, such as the Advisory Council (formed by three States: Egypt, Colombia and the Philippines), having substantial functions of control over the activity of the administering State; c) temporariness of the regime: 10 years from the approval of the convention by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Some aspects of the system have given rise to important legal questions. Among others, the problems of the nature of trusteeship agreements and of so-called "territorial sovereignty" must be noted.
On the first point: the trusteeship agreements submitted for the approval of the General Assembly of the United Nations (and of the Security Council, limited to strategic areas) have been variously characterized. Briefly it may be said - emphasizing the relativity of the terminology, variously understood in the very science of internal law from which it is borrowed, and setting aside the thesis that would identify a convention whose parties would be formed not by the interested States alone, but, on the one hand by the latter, on the other by the United Nations - that the convention, in relation to the aforementioned approval, has been considered as part of a complex act or as a conditioned bi-or plurilateral act.
On the second point: the discussions on the theme of territorial sovereignty raised in their time by the application of the mandates system of the League of Nations have been revived for trust administrations. Noting here too how the solution changes according to the meaning with which the term "territorial sovereignty" is assumed and, in particular, according to whether or not it is made to consist in a real right over the territory, the principal theses may be reduced to four. Attribution of sovereignty: 1) to the administering State (a thesis connected - but not exclusively - to the denial that territorial sovereignty consists in a real right); 2) to the United Nations; 3) to the local populations (a thesis connected to the conception of sovereignty as a real right and to the possibility of distinguishing in it an undam ius from an exercitium iuris, the first belonging to the populations, the second to the administering State); 4) to the States which, having the disposal of the territory, consent to subject it to trusteeship.
From trust territories must be distinguished the so-called "non-self-governing" territories. This last designation refers to all ex-colonial territories that depend on members of the United Nations without being subjected to trusteeship. Chap. 11 of the Charter of the United Nations, entitled precisely "Declaration regarding non-self-governing territories," lays down a series of obligations for the administering State, obligations which, according to one part of the doctrine, are moral and not legal. It must be noted, finally, that, according to a unanimous opinion, the principles of chap. 11, by their general value, also apply to trust territories.
Bibliography7 works
Pasquale Paone