IO/ODA Files: Lot 62D228. Box 231
Draft Memorandum 1
Subject: How the Administering Authorities Might Improve the Work of the Trusteeship Council
1. The functions of the Trusteeship Council rest upon two basic principles: (a) the principle of accountability, and (b) the principle [Page 344] of constructive inter-change. The principle of accountability will be emphasized primarily by the non-administering members of the Council. The principle of constructive inter-change of ideas and information will be exercised, primarily by the administering members since experience is a basic factor in this aspect of the Council’s work.
2. If either principle is over emphasized or neglected, the work of the Trusteeship Council will be distorted. Until now the principle of accountability has been given major attention and in practice has been exercised by some of the non-administering members in a provocative manner, with the result that the two groups comprising the Council have tended to become somewhat sharply divided.
3. Until now the administering members have not brought out the possibilities inherent in the Council, but have seemed content to play a reluctantly passive role, sometimes slightly haughty, sometimes irritated, hardly ever openly and constructively helpful. This has been the inevitable result of permitting the non-administering members to assume the initiative, which they have done in a frequently discourteous manner, often couching their questions in the form of—“When did you stop beating your wife?”
4. The administering members who have the experience and “the know-how” could change the whole picture, if they took the initiative and placed the emphasis on the work of the Council on the second principle, namely, constructive inter-change of experience and information. That this is so, one need only refer to the history and the experience of the Permanent Mandates Commission2 where men like Lord Lugard3 as well as other members with wide colonial administrative experience frequently exercised a constructive as well as critical role in discussing subjects with the special representatives who might frequently be representatives of their own countries.
5. It is here suggested that the Trusteeship Council could be made one of the best functioning organs of the United Nations and be made to contribute in a positive and constructive way to trusteeship and, incidentally, to colonial administration, if the initiative were taken away from the more or less ignorant or vicious critics who are threatening to deadlock the Council and break it into two sharply divided groups.
6. The administering authorities have it in their power to transform the work of the Trusteeship Council by assuming the initiative in the following manner:
- (a)
- Each administering authority in addition to answering supplementary questions, might indicate the four or five main problems [Page 345] which the territory continues to present and might invite helpful suggestions from other members of the Council.
- (b)
- Representatives of other administering authorities should be prompt and helpful in offering advice or suggestions based upon experience. In this role, Sir Alan Burns and Gov. Ryckmans4 for example, could obviously be supremely helpful.
- (c)
- When the non-administering representatives ask reasonable questions, they should be answered in a generous spirit as has been the case in the last few days by M. Watler of the French Cameroons. When questions and criticisms are unreasonable, it will often be possible to show by comparison that conditions in the territory are not exceptional to the conditions in countries which are independent members of the United Nations.
7. All members of the Council should take every opportunity to read commendations into the record where such are obviously justified.
8. Representatives of the administering authorities on the Council should take the opportunity wherever possible to cultivate members of the non-administering group and try to get them to break away from the bloc voting idea and particularly from giving undiscriminating support to the Soviet member.
9. Representatives of the administering members who by the basic nature of the Charter provisions have certain interests in common, should occasionally discuss these informally outside the Council. Where members of the administering group consider that issues are of vital importance to them, there should, if possible, be prior consultation before final votes are taken. This should not, however, deprive members individually from taking action and voting in accordance with their individual responsibilities.
-
On February 14 this memorandum (or one presumably closely approximating thereto) was handed by O. Benjamin Gerig, Director of the Office of Dependent Area Affairs, to Sir Alan Burns, British Representative on the United Nations Trusteeship Council (see British Embassy letter, dated April 4, 1949, p. 347). The source text is from the files of the Department of State’s Committee on Problems of Dependent Areas (CDA) as Committee Doc. CDA–565, dated June 7, 1949. (CDA was a committee with an existence going back to 1943 but which had not had an active life in the United Nations period (1946 ff.) In the year 1949 it was in one of the “active” periods.)
Internal evidence indicates that this paper was prepared in New York where Gerig was attnding the Fourth Session of the Trusteeship Council (January 24–March 25, 1949) as Alternate United States Representative.
↩ - Of the League of Nations.↩
- Lord Lugard was a prominent British colonial administrator of the late nineteenth century in Africa (Uganda).↩
- Pierre Ryckmans, Belgian Representative on the Trusteeship Council and former Governor General of the Belgian Congo.↩